


Mendacium Ex Machina

by queerly_it_is



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Body Modification, Dystopia, Established Relationship, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Gore, Oral Sex, Science Fiction, Steampunk, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:15:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerly_it_is/pseuds/queerly_it_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a society where mechanical augmentation has become commonplace, Sam and Dean Winchester are resistance fighters waging a war against biotech magnate Dick Roman, of Roman Innovations. Forced to ally themselves with the very people responsible for the world they live in, the Winchesters must take desperate action to prevent a global power grab that could mean the end of everything, while battling their own demons and trying to hold onto the bond that’s always kept them together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mendacium Ex Machina

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sam/Dean OTP Minibang challenge 2012.
> 
> Betaed by akadougal.
> 
> Art by amber1960 here - http://amber1960.livejournal.com/113764.html

**_ THEN _ **

  
  
  
_“…lost his groundbreaking lawsuit against prominent biotech firm Azazel Enterprises today. Citing criminal negligence in the death of his wife, John Winchester’s case had the potential to significantly delay plans to make augmentation more available to the general public. Although cameras were banned from the proceedings; crowds of protestors picketed the courthouse for the duration of…”_  
  
| |  
  
 _“We’ve been integrating ourselves with technology for decades now; replacing lost or damaged limbs, implanting data chips that give away huge amounts of personal information to governments and corporations all across the globe…”_  
  
| |  
  
 _“…CEO of Azazel Enterprises gunned down outside the firm’s corporate headquarters in Wyoming. Police have released security footage placing Sam and Dean Winchester - sons of former anti-augmentation lobbyist John Winchester - at the scene. Anyone with knowledge of their whereabouts is being urged to contact…”_  
  
| |  
  
“Human augmentation is a perversion of God’s will. They ask us to become machines; to sacrifice our freedom and humanity on the altar of corporate greed. The Word of God will not stand by and wait for Judgement Day; we will meet them in the streets, and in their offices, and their laboratories, and force them to…”  
  
| |  
  
 _“…plans to restructure Crowley Cybernetics following a buyout by rising star Richard Roman, of Roman Innovations…”  
  
“…rumours of human experimentation causing ripples in the financial world as stock prices continue to climb to record heights…”  
  
“Richard Roman today signed a historic military contract with several branches of the United States armed…”_  
  
| |  
  
 _“Roman Innovations has unveiled their new Leviathan augmentation system. A revolutionary series of upgrades aimed at the consumer with the goal of becoming the cheapest, most accessible brand in the world. Dr Cas Tiel - leading scientist behind the project and former employee of Crowley Cybernetics - has reportedly resigned due to work-related stress; however CEO Richard Roman has promised that…”_  
  
| |  
  
“This is a business driven by fear. If I don’t improve myself; augment myself; I’ll be less successful; less intelligent, less able to compete than the rest of the human race…”  
  
| |  
  
 _“…growing numbers of people experiencing side effects…”  
  
“…dramatic increase in cases of augment psychosis…”  
  
“…establishment of shelters for those suffering augment rejection…”_  
  
| |  
  
“We’re unifying humanity; bringing down the barriers that separate people, and bringing us all closer to the inevitable Singularity. We can become the gods we’ve always been striving to be, and I am honoured to have the chance to lead us down that path.”  
  
“…is asking you to replace your perfectly healthy, functional body parts with mechanical augmentations. What they are doing is ethically and morally wrong…”  
  
| |  
  
 _“…of rioting outside augmentation clinics has resulted in the deployment of military personnel to several major cities, in an effort to protect the public. Already many protesters have been injured and dozens more arrested on suspicion of terrorist activities…”_  
  
| |  
  
“They’ll be able to send messages into your brain; control your thoughts, as if they had the power of God.”  
  
“It’s human nature to want to rise above our limits. There’s no crime in inventing tools to overcome weakness, or in looking to a future beyond the constraints of biology. The small-minded people who want to impede that march to a higher evolution? Well, they won’t stand in our way for long.”  
  
| |  
  
“…have been abused; kidnapped; experimented on. Any resistance or opposition is met by brutal terror on the people. When does this stop? How long will you…”  
  
 _“Violent clashes erupted again today outside several satellite facilities of Roman…”_  
  
| |  
  
“You see a bright and happy future? I see a police state run by super-solders! You see freedom and a better life? I see cell doors; barbed wire; camps for ‘defectives’ whose own bodies turn against them…”  
  
 _“…so-called underground resistance movement have sparked curfews to be tightened in many urban population centres…”  
  
“…yet another multi-billion dollar merger, taking Richard Roman to the very top of the fortune 100...” _  
  
| |  
  
“…Innovations has the power to turn off your limbs. The potential to shut down your eyes. You think ol’ Dick’ll stop at replacing soldier’s arms and legs with weaponised ‘upgrades’? You think he’ll be satisfied using his puppets to win foreign oil wars, and his paid-for politicians to dictate government legislation? Make no mistake my friends; they will come for us all. And when they do; they won’t need guns, or knives, or explosives. Just the flick of a switch; and we will all go willingly.”  
  
| |  
  
 _“…broke into a Roman Innovations research and development complex in the early hours of this morning. It is unclear what the Winchesters were hoping to accomplish, however we do know a virus was left in the mainframe that crippled the…”_  
  
“These men are dangerous, and they will continue to pose a threat to the public good until they are apprehended, or stopped by other means. If you have any information on Sam or Dean Winchester, please contact the…”  
  
| |  
  
 _“…now officially the most wanted criminals in America today, following a shootout that resulted in the deaths of…”  
  
“…hacked the Roman Innovations site and disrupted traffic…”_  
  
“…just welcoming us all to Nineteen Eighty-Four. The bus got here a little late, and our tour guide George Orwell is good and dead; but hey we’re here now, and Big Brother Roman is watching!”  
  
| |  
  
 _“…messages of anti-augmentation propaganda continue to plague the net as tech teams search for the source of the pirated…”  
  
“…brothers have not been seen for several months. Speculation is rampant following the destruction of several…”_  
  
| |  
  
 _“…amid rumours that the footage showing the Winchester’s as they were shot and killed by local police is a result of holo-manipulation…”  
  
“…no comment on the lack of DNA evidence at the crime scene, however…”_  
  
“I think they’re heroes.”  
  
“They’re all terrorists, and they deserve what they get.”  
  
“The Winchesters? Nah man they’ve been dead for months, no matter what the conspiracy wackos say.”  
  
“I’ll admit they were something of a thorn in our proverbial paw, but that’s all. There are always a few short-sighted individuals who need a little extra guidance to be brought into the fold. I’m not concerned, no.”  
  
| |  
  
“…and if our lords and masters think we’re going quietly; they’ve got a very rude, violent awakening coming their way. This has been the Frank Truth. Think human, stay human.  
  
 _“…as conflicting reports continue to pile up, the manhunt for other terrorist groups goes on throughout…”_  
  
  
 ** _NOW_**  
  
  
The detonator sits square-edged and skin-warmed in the middle of Dean’s palm. He’s been turning it over and over for at least five minutes, waiting for Sam to hurry his ass up and set the last charge; before riot police or more of Dick’s upgraded lackeys show up. Or worse; more Word crazies coming back to spray paint logos and break more windows.  
  
“Anytime now would be nice, Sam,” he mutters into the frigid night air. Watches his breath plume over the lip of the rooftop. Waiting for any sign of his brother by the orange glimmer of the burning transport that sits like a twisted carcass across the wrecked street.  
  
“Yeah I’ve almost got it.” Sam’s voice faintly echoing in his earpiece; clear enough even with the car alarms ringing and the sirens in the distance. He sounds maybe a little out of breath, kinda distracted; but not ‘there’s-a-projection-of-a-sadistic-scientist-torturer-in-my-head’ distracted, so Dean’ll take it. They can’t exactly turn down opportunities like this, regardless of how balanced Sam is on any given day. He can say he’s doing okay all he likes; doesn’t mean Dean misses it when his eyes dart to empty air, or his fingers run over his left hand; chasing some echo of feeling or maybe just a habit, Dean doesn‘t know.  
  
He hasn’t asked.  
  
He wills himself to believe everything’s fine, that Sam can do this. The warehouse is empty; the cameras are dead; the two over-augmented mercs guarding the place were taken down in whatever shitstorm the Word guys kicked up before they cleared out. It’s just them, the rubble, and a whole lotta stockpiled Leviathan tech begging for the right amount of nano explosive.  
  
“I’m done,” finally comes through the earpiece like a caress, and despite Dean’s taped-together faith his gut still unknots a little when he sees Sam’s shadow. He flits out the side door; moving silent and catlike between stacks of crates before he vanishes again.  
  
Minutes later he’s up on the roof, and there’s a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth when Dean reflexively checks him over. Like he’s hiding a wound somewhere. Not like it’d be unprecedented.  
  
“You took your sweet time,” he says as he shifts to his feet and primes the switch on the detonator, little bleep as the light turns green. “Was about to leave. Maybe go for coffee.”  
  
“Hey I would’ve stopped for takeout but I heard somewhere that it funds evil corporations,” Sam says, deadpan and earnest. Dean grins, fits his fingers over the trigger, raises his eyebrows a little.  
  
Sam nods, sure. Dean squeezes until the contact plates meet; and the building behind him erupts into a chaotic blaze of fire and noise; rains down chunks of battered metal. Washes out the ambient sounds of the city.  
  
The force of the blast knocks into his back as a push of hot air, stirs the hairs at his nape, almost makes him flinch. Instead he just watches Sam; hair pushed back and jacket open, skin shining with perspiration save for the damn skin-tight black gloves Dean is coming to hate even more than the bangs he used to hide behind as a moody teenager. Sam and his barriers, all those shields he sticks up.  
  
The firelight reflects as white glints in Sam’s eyes; colour bled away by the surrounding darkness, shadows thrown sharp across the angles of his face. He’s worn and hurting and too bad at hiding it, and Dean just stares like an answer’s gonna grow between them; weeds crawling up though concrete.  
  
Sam faces him, smiles tired, crooked enough that a dimple pops. It’s ridiculous the effect that still has on Dean in what basically amounts to a war zone on the edge of an apocalypse. Teetering; precarious like one good shove would send it sailing over.  
  
As they book for the fire escape, Dean hears the cracked vidscreen across the way sputtering it’s last lines of corper bullshit like a death knell. Same old message they’ve heard countless times since Dick came on the scene.  
  
 _“Roman Innovations. Building a better you, for a brighter future.”_  
  
Watching the glowing flames and tendrils of black smoke climb up into the sky, blotting out the specks of light from the skyscrapers in the distance; Dean thinks he likes their way of ‘brightening the future’ a helluva lot better.

  
~*~

  
They pull into the gloomy lot just as the sun starts to turn the sky a pasty blue-grey, and Dean has a brief flash of rain coming down on the burning warehouse before deciding it probably doesn’t matter.  
  
The engine protests with a coughing rumble, and he has to press the footbrake right into the floor before they stop, but at least they don’t end up going through the wall of the motel. He wants to bitch about missing the Impala, but at this point he’s got every response of Sam’s memorised, and he‘s too damn wiped to follow the playbook anyway.  
  
The junker’s engine ticks too loud and too frequent (s’even the wrong pitch, of all the stupid details to get hung up on) but as Dean scrubs as a hand over his face and watches the old guy from the end room - no name, says he doesn’t remember, even on his good days - hobble to his door; leaning half on the wall and half on a battered steel crutch, he just wants to shut his eyes and not move for a century or two.  
  
“We going inside, or just sleeping in the car like the good old days?” Sam says, after too much silence stretches out with not enough rest.  
  
Dean lets the air out of his lungs through his teeth. Slow and hissing, tire with a nail in it. His hand scrapes over the crappy plastic door handle. He lets the creak of the seat as he folds himself out be his answer.  
  
The air is cold, smells like gasoline and garbage; undefined alley stench clinging to the uneven ground. There’s barely enough light from the sickly pale fluorescent over the manager’s office to see by. Not like the guy inside’s the manager anyway.  
  
Their door swings open with a twist of the handle, unlocked, ‘cause what’s the point even if the flimsy latch was still nailed into the wood properly? He flings his jacket over the lawn chair sat angled next to the stained, too-small table. Stands and blinks at the murky twilight that coats everything like a sickness when Sam turns on the lone bedside lamp.  
  
His gun gets tucked into the back of his pants, holster stripped off his right leg with efficient, well-practiced moves, before it’s carelessly tossed onto the table, almost sliding off the edge.  
  
The bed creaks a warning as Sam sits himself down, but it hasn’t quite collapsed yet so Dean’s not panicking over it. He snags a half-empty bottle of water from the remains of ‘breakfast’, contemplates the box of protein bars if only to have something to do. He drains half of what’s there, screws on the lid and lobs it in Sam’s general direction.  
  
“We should call Frank,” Sam says, slumping back against the yellowing wallpaper, words stretched and mangled by a yawn. The empty bottle scrunches, dents in his hand. His pressure control’s improving.  
  
“You should call Frank,” Dean returns, childish and no idea why except that he’s more or less swaying on his feet.  
  
Sam just snorts, and their latest disposable phone bumps Dean hard in the shoulder, gets snatched out of the air on reflex. That, and they can’t afford to keep breaking phones.  
  
“Fine fine, I’ll do all the work. Bitch,” he mumbles as his fingers do the walking.  
  
The tone cycles through whatever chirping bit of encryption hardware Frank’s using this week, then rings twice before crackling to life. Some classical tune runs faintly in the background, trumpets and who knows what.  
  
“Mary had a little lamb,” Dean says around a pained cringe, before Frank can prompt him and drag the embarrassment out. Fuck him for picking that line anyway. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam smirks. Dean sends him a cheery, emphatic middle finger.  
  
“It’s already making the rounds, boys,” Frank says, sounding way to awake for a guy who probably hasn’t slept in twenty-plus years. “‘Suspected terrorist attack at Roman Innovations storage depot.’ Personally I wouldn’t have minded a bigger bang, but that’s a few hundred augs that won’t be getting stuck into anybody’s flesh, so I can’t complain.”  
  
“You’re all heart, Frank,” Dean says, while Frank barrels on.  
  
“No statement from our favourite despot CEO as of yet, but there was a charming little drop in R.I.’s stock price just after the announcement hit the net. No doubt they’re all spitting and cursing and jumping on the least reputation-damaging excuse right now.”  
  
Dean allows himself a tired smirk, feels it tug his lips over his teeth. “Yeah well they can’t exactly blame us without magicking us back to life again. ‘Least those crime spree douchebag copies were good for something.”  
  
Frank chuckles through static on the other end. “Oh they’ve already played your ‘deaths’ on the news feeds at least twice since the explosion got noticed; complete with frame-by-frame bullet impacts and statements from police officials. Seems that Dick wants his little toy anchors to remind John and Jane Q. Public that you both got aerated by the Gestapo, and that there’s no reason not to go and get a limb replaced in the morning like good little sheep.”  
  
Dean shrugs, pointless but for the habit; easier than talking. “Eh, maybe the Word can take the credit this time; make themselves look halfway credible for all of five minutes.” Says it without a lotta optimism.  
  
Frank just chuckles again, keys clacking like an undertone. Brief pause, a warning. “So, I’ve been working on Bobby’s intel.”  
  
Dean goes still. Stiller. Sam twitches into alertness and gives him a look, sixth sense or whatever. Dean turns his back.  
  
The silvery disc of a projector sits heavy in his pocket; lead weight that’s lighter than his gun for all the meaning stuffed into it. The gun has meaning too o‘course, in that his dad’s fingerprints are all but etched into the grip. Specks of blood trapped underneath the slide. Memories in the creak of the trigger - _squeeze, don‘t pull Dean_. - But nothing like this.  
  
“Oh?” he manages, grits his teeth through the tiny crack between the letters, like water shoving into rock. He knows Sam heard it anyway. Probably busy frowning at his shoulders right now.  
  
“I’ve been over it backwards, forwards and upside-down a million times, but it turns out there’re a lot of things those numbers could mean, Dean. Don’t suppose you could just, oh I don’t know, maybe _ask_ Bobby if-”  
  
“No,” Dean cuts in like an axe through rotted wood. Free hand tensing ‘til the knuckles crack. “No. Sorry,” he tacks on, scratches at the grit under his jaw with ragged nails. Ain’t a speck of him that’s actually clean.  
  
Frank sighs, tiny break in the noise of a keyboard working. Dean thinks he’s probably counting to ten or something.  
  
“My best guess - without having the last few segments -” Frank grumbles, and Dean just waits him out, “is that it’s some sorta databurst frequency. But not radio or infolink or any of that other standard crap. We’re talkin’ black helicopter, Illuminati type stuff here, Dean. Complex harmonics like I’ve never seen before. There’s enough deep code in what’s there to make me _rea_ l nervous. And I don’t like being nervous Dean; it puts me off my feed.”  
  
Dean winces, waves a hand over his shoulder when he hears Sam shift like he‘s gonna stand. “Hey I uh, I don’t like you being nervous either Frank.” Momentary recall to a shotgun in his face and a hand none too steady. “But we need to know what those numbers mean. Bobby d--Bobby wouldn’t have focused on ‘em if they weren’t important,” He settles on the sentence like a refuge, doesn’t think about whatever look Sam’s wearing behind him.  
  
“Well they got swiped right off of Roman’s personal system, so I’d bet there’s enough there to get us all disappeared with bags over our heads and taken straight to the nearest gulag. But I can only do so much with a puzzle that’s missing pieces,” he says it like it hurts. For him it probably does.  
  
Dean blinks the sand from his eyes. Looks up at the ceiling where it’s spotted brown and dips in the centre.  
  
Frank grunts out a noise. “Listen, I’ve got a few acquaintances in the underground who owe me - some of them more than you two, if you can believe that. There are a few techs who might - and I need to stress the ‘might’ part - be able to come up with something. I’ll pass it on to the names I trust, let them go from there.” Dean doesn’t like when Frank gets reasonable. It means they’re two feet deeper in shit than they were a minute ago.  
  
His thumb traces one edge of the projector through his jeans, feels it warmed just like the lining by the skin beneath.  
  
“So, Charlie then?” he asks, and almost enjoys Franks bitten off cuss. If it hurts Frank knowing there’s a system he can’t beat, it must kill him that there’s someone better at beating systems than he is.  
  
“Yeah yeah, laugh it up sweetheart. And ask Bobby about those damn numbers.” The call dies with a shuffling series of clicks. Dean swears under his breath, tosses the phone onto the table.  
  
“Good news?” Sam asks, a little sleep-slurred but still drier than a desert in Hell.  
  
Dean doesn’t answer. He stands with one hand on the table, bracing. His thumb picks at where the cover’s peeling off like chapped skin. Flakes of it getting under his nail.  
  
He sighs, shoves his other hand into his pocket, tugs out the multisided, flat plate of metal and sits it in his palm. Like a papery-fine flower he’d plucked off of his clothes. An ornament he doesn’t wanna drop on accident. Some part of his frontal lobe keeps him from flinging it against the far wall, letting it crack and spew glittering parts over the room.  
  
Sam is utterly quiet, gaze resting heavy from across the empty space.  
  
He lays it down on the table, tap of alloy on the battered plastic; a whole lot gentler than he’d been with either the holster or the phone. It glints, innocent and too clean-looking in their dingy room with it’s rundown tenants. The imbedded circlet of an on-switch glows faintly blue; pulses of slow radiance in some fallacy of a heartbeat.  
  
He’s not doing this. Not now. Not tonight.  
  
He drags himself over to the bed, Sam watching him blank-faced and with dropping eyes sat deep above purple marks like bruises, smudge of grime on one cheek. The crease between his eyebrows is a thousand questions Dean doesn’t have the answers to.  
  
Dean doesn’t know what to say. All his words are used up, inadequate before he even starts.  
  
Outside, rain dashes against the door in a thousand needle pricks of cold and wet. Splinters of dawn light creep through the gauzy curtain like bony fingers. Wind rattles the glass in it’s frame.  
  
He looks at Sam’s hands; wrapped in glossy black. Lifetime of calluses and scars, fine little hairs and crinkled skin all hidden away. Half stolen from Sam. All of them stolen from Dean.  
  
“Y’should take those off,” he says, airiness wrecked by the heavy thunk of the gun against the nightstand, knife slid into his empty boot. He shucks his jeans with a clink of the belt. Sam’s expression gets hidden with a ruffle of ripe-smelling cotton over his head.  
  
“I’m okay,” Sam breathes, quiet. Fingers toying with the edge of the left glove where a sliver of pure white hints from underneath, seamless from his wrist.  
  
He wonders if Sam even thinks it’s a lie.  
  
They squash and curl and fold awkward onto the squeaky frame with it’s sagging excuse for a mattress. Dean listens to his heart slow. Tries to imagine it’s Sam’s.  
  
Heat bleeds between them under the ratty pile of blankets; necessity more than comfort.  
  
Sam’s knee comes to rest in the hollow of Dean’s, single point of contact. Dean knows the feel of him, the shape. All the lines and dips and parts where he’s soft. Vulnerable. He knows the sounds; voice to breath to the pound of his heart. The rhythms of him. He knows Sam. Dean knows his brother.  
  
He doesn’t know where Sam is.  
  
Dean sleeps. He dreams of gleaming black and polished chrome. The smell of leather. The plastic clatter of his tapes; Sam’s voice a soundtrack to actual music. Roar of an engine.  
  
Dean sleeps, and dreams of cold metal tables and the lingering, old penny tang of blood. The snap of a spine, too quick. The echoing, double bark of a shotgun.  
  
Dean sleeps, and hears his brother scream.

  
~*~

  
It’s rare that Sam wakes up first these days.  
  
Sleep itself is kind of rare, really. At least for more than an hour at a time that isn’t spent muffling noises behind his teeth, counting his heartbeats. Reliving things that had been bad enough the first time.  
  
Dean’s got some sort of contest going with himself over how little rest he can get before he drops; like he has to just hover and wait to see if Sam’s gonna lose his shit again. Real concern or not; good intentions or not; Sam hates it.  
  
They’re closer together than they were when Sam finally nodded off. The blanket’s gotten bunched and squashed between them like a wall of thready fabric. Lying on his side, Sam can smell the slightly unclean scent of Dean’s hair just in front of his face. He breathes, deep. Slow. Light does it’s best against the curtain; easy victory shedding muted white, cruelly revealing imperfections.  
  
They aren’t touching, anywhere.  
  
Sam’s lying on his hands.  
  
Pins and needles run along his right-hand fingers, up the wrist, prickling through nerves and down to bone as the blood tries to push on through. The left one is a faint, cool ache; like ice resting on skin, left to melt. It’s not quite pain. It’s still pain enough.  
  
Amusement flickers in the back of his head, not his own. Sharp, measured, curious. The cut of a scalpel.  
  
 _Pain is physical, Sam. Organic._  
  
He keeps his eyes closed, pink-red of vessels and film of his lids lit from outside, tries to imagine every thought and feeling just swirling away, water down a dark hole. He focuses on his breathing. Times the rise and fall of his chest with Dean’s, counterpoint.  
  
Dean’s a warm, familiar presence just out of reach; pulling at him like gravity. Lodestone.  
  
Sam doesn’t touch him.  
  
Time passes in uneven, jumpy fragments. He doesn’t know what the plan is today; beyond: _Stay alive, Stay sane. Stay human_. He repeats it in his head; three little ticks counted one second at a time. Repeats it again.  
  
He’s taken to not knowing like a defence. Less ammunition for the… for his brain to use.  
  
He doesn’t like it, but it’s necessary. _Like is a luxury._ Bobby’d said that to him once.  
  
Eventually Dean jolts awake; immediate and motionless. Silent. The way he’s done for years.  
  
Sam listens as he gets up and putters around the room. Splash of murky water in the rusted sink; baking soda on a worn toothbrush. Shuffle of clothes. Crinkle of a wrapper.  
  
Sam doesn’t pay attention to the other sounds. Beeping and the chink of metal-on-metal. Muffled voices talking low, clinical. Impersonal. Dean doesn’t react to them, so neither does Sam.  
  
His hand aches.  
  
“C’mon Sam,” Dean says eventually; quiet like he doesn’t already know Sam’s been awake this whole time. He’s been too willing to pander lately. “Can’t spend all day lazing around on your ass.” He’s facing the other way, tucking his gun into the back of his pants, holster abandoned on the table. Means a public place then. As public as they can be, anyway.  
  
Sam rises, quiet and smooth. A shimmer of white passes through his periphery, and he wants to flinch. He doesn’t. Neither does Dean, so he wasn’t wrong. He focuses on dressing; precise, consuming movements. One thought at a time.  
  
“We got plans?” he asks, doing up his belt, sitting back on the bed, reaching for his boots. Twenty-plus years of dog-with-a-bone curiosity still trumps one year’s worth of wacko sometimes.  
  
Dean doesn’t answer. When Sam looks up from fiddling with his laces, Dean’s watching him; face a rictus, eyes not fully in the present.  
  
Old habits.  
  
“We’re running low on… everything, really,” Dean says, like he’s realising it now. “Plus I wanna head into the District, see if there’s any news on what Dick or the Word are up to.”  
  
“Facts on the ground,” Sam concludes, something visceral shifting at their father’s favourite phrase.  
  
“You got it,” Dean says, all false energy like a windup toy. He buttons it by shoving the projector into the inside of his jacket, hand scrubbing through his still-damp hair as he turns to leave.  
  
“So,” Sam starts abruptly, plucked from him, helpless. Like poking at a loose tooth. “You ever gonna tell me what Frank said last night?”  
  
Dean stops near the door, arm extended, fingers moving for the handle. His shoulders bunch. Sam waits, stays seated. Dean likes the high ground.  
  
 _Manipulative._  
  
Dean turns, slow. Considered thumps of booted feet on the barely there carpet. Three. Four. Eyes meeting, glancing off Sam like sun on water.  
  
“He’s working on it,” Dean says, like Sam didn’t already know. Like he couldn’t have figured that out just from Dean’s end of the conversation.  
  
“Long talk just for ‘working on it’” Sam says, temperate as he can. Dean’s jaw ticks a little, chest falling on a huffed breath.  
  
“He thinks the numbers are some kinda signal, but he can’t be sure. He’s gonna ask around for us.” He says it totally bland, almost monotonal. Sam does his best not to prod him, looking for a reaction. An angry, gesticulating Dean is always better than a blank Dean. Blank is rain rinsing mud into an open grave. Blank is fire where the Roadhouse used to be. Blank is Sam tearing shreds of skin from his own wrist, pushing at a hand that isn’t; grasping for cauterised scars along his spine.  
  
“Charlie?” he asks, level, replaying Dean’s words from last night. Trying to puzzle through what sort of transmissions would warrant Dick’s personal attention, when the man already owns every major news broadcaster on the net, plus who knows how many others.  
  
Dean snorts; a phantom laugh. “Yeah. Charlie and any other tech who owes him more than just a lousy beer and a good right hook, most likely.”  
  
Sam tries for a smile that Dean isn’t watching for.  
  
“Also he uh…” Dean picks up again, slower, loaded hesitancy that tightens Sam’s gut. This road never leads to a good place. “He wanted me t’ask Bobby.” That… makes sense, actually. Sam shouldn’t be relieved that it wasn’t technically about him. He is though, just the same.  
  
“I take it you don’t like the idea?” Sam asks, entirely pointless.  
  
Dean’s eyes are scrutinising the - bare, apart from some inkblot water stains - wall furthest from the door. Frown like it’s not right; mystery hidden in crappy drywall.  
  
Blank is Bobby with a bullet in his head.  
  
“Way to put it mildly, Sam,” Dean says, back of a hand scrubbing at the grimace on his face.  
  
“Dean, if he does know anything…” Sam trails off, hand cutting a line through the air between them. “Anything at all about what Dick’s planning, then we have to-”  
  
“Have to what, Sam?” Dean breaks in, steps closer. “You saw what happened. What he was like the last time.” Sam winces at the memory of the holding cell; Bobby a distorted mess; the outright fear on Charlie’s too-gaunt face. The pain all over Dean’s.  
  
He pushes on. “This is bigger than us, Dean. Bigger than me, than you. Than Bobby. We’re just gonna ignore it and hope it turns out okay? Since when has that ever worked for us?” The words just tumble out, hypocrisy and all. Like he’s been rehearsing. He knows it’s a low blow even before he finishes. Too much crap piled onto too few people, not enough left to bear the strain. And now he’s sitting here calling Dean selfish.  
  
Dean looks like Sam’d taken a swing at him. Sam wishes he had. There’d be blood, bruises, broken bones. Things that mend. Things that fade.  
  
“Don’t you talk to me like I don’t get it,” Dean says; voice a low rumble, warning. Dangerous. “But if we turn that thing on and Bobby’s not… not Bobby anymore.” He swallows hard, throat moving audibly. “Then you know that’s it. End of game. No take backs.”  
  
“Dean it’s not him now, not really. You saw him too; did he seem like the man we both remember?” He’s twisting the knife, can’t stop now. “He’s an echo, Dean. An imprint. That’s all.” He does try for gentle. Tries to ignore the sting in his eyes, the roil of his stomach.  
  
“What d’you want me to do, Sam?” Dean asks, little abortive shrug of his arms out from his sides. He looks tall, like this. He looks small too. “Demand the answers he might have, and then just watch as he rips himself apart?”  
  
Sam wants to yell, wants to stand and get in Dean’s face, raise the volume. He wants to leave the stupidly tiny room and just move, out in the open air.  
  
Sam stays where he is, and tries to look his brother in the eye.  
  
“These things don’t last; they aren’t supposed to. It all goes the same way, Dean, sooner or later. You can’t hold onto it forever.” Waver in his speech, Dean’s jaw locked tight, his eyes are dark. Implication is a third person in a room meant for one.  
  
“Why not?” Barbs in Dean’s voice now, digging in, tugging. Blood welling up. “S’what we do now, right? Just pretend. Pretend the world’s not sliding down the pan. Pretend Bobby ain’t just a bad copy in a stolen piece’a tech? Pretend you’re fine; like you’re not sleeping in leather gloves and jumping at shit that’s not there?” He’s nearly breathless. Harsh, choppy up-down of ribs like he’s been running instead of almost-shouting. Sam’s heart is beating, too fast. He’s flashing cold, freezing solid from the inside, palms sweating, beads forming slick beneath his gloves.  
  
 _Cold grey eyes, the flash of cruel lights on steel. Too many questions and death memories laid over and over each other like stones, pebbles that make a mountain. Screams that tear his throat to ribbons._  
  
He blinks hard, swallows bitterness creeping up. Stares at the fleeting guilt on Dean’s face as it gets trampled beneath the anger, captivating, like watching a car wreck.  
  
“You’re right,” he says, hoarse. Anything else would be a lie. “About all of it. But Dean, we’re running fairly low on options here.” It’s too heavy; everything from the sound of his voice to the air itself, weighing in his chest. Truth hurts like everything does.  
  
“Exactly why we’re not burning through the one shot we have, on the off chance it’ll work out,” Dean says, finality a blow that cracks the stillness. “Not until we’re totally sure there’s no other way.” He turns, gets halfway through the door before seeming to realise Sam’s still sat there.  
  
“You coming?” he asks, turned in profile and ringed in pallor. He sounds tired already.  
  
Sam nods, chips away the ice, follows him out. What else can he do?

  
~*~

  
The District never looks quite the same twice, Dean thinks.  
  
It’s also impossibly more depressing in daylight.  
  
They leave the car under a decrepit highway overpass; a camouflage of fallen brick and layers of crud, gloom devouring everything.  
  
Dean takes point and heads into the nearest street entrance, walking deeper into the grimy network that makes up the place, like veins in some big dead animal.  
  
There’re scraps of wood and old plastics strewn everywhere; boxes and wrappings and hollow industrial bins, carrion picked clean.  
  
Tarps fastened between the looming buildings flutter in the breeze, strung across stories in irregular platforms of grubby shelter, casting off-white when the sunlight scores across them. Boards take the place of windows, layered like patchwork bandages over decay, a faded spectrum of graffiti forming death throes of colour.  
  
It stinks.  
  
“S’quiet,” Sam offers, eyes jumping from doorway to doorway, window to window. The stalls - what few of them there are - that crop up like a slapdash marketplace are abandoned; ratty awnings and bare, makeshift shelves like skeletons.  
  
Steam rises lazy from grates and drains, swaths of vapour marring the emptiness.  
  
Dean breathes slow, tugs air through his nose and regrets it. “Yeah. Not empty though.”  
  
The back of Dean’s neck prickles with the rising of all those tiny hairs; instincts whispering of unseen eyes.  
  
Sam nods, grim, squinting at shadows.  
  
They walk on, toward the rough ‘centre’ of the District; passing through all the nothing filled with bits of shoddy living, cast off like old skins, outgrown.  
  
An old street-level billboard - made with paper and held up in a metal frame, no holograms or screens - rests crooked and defaced; draws the eye with a scrawl of red letters, sprayed over the clean white-grey of the usual R.I. promises about augs. Some bored yahoo’s warnings of doom and the end of days.  
  
Dean appreciates the thought, but really, in this place? It’s not exactly hot news.  
  
They pass a woman resting on the lowest flight of an old fire escape, leaning on the railing with her knees drawn up, flare from the end of her cigarette, smoke slowly rising. Her legs are dark grey alloy, flowing lines of metal with seamless joints and bifurcated, flexing blades that curve into the vague shape of feet, ‘toes’ curved the opposite way, over the edge of the next step down. The tight coils of cable and silent mechanisms lead up from above her ‘knees’, vanish beneath the frayed clothes that drape her hips.  
  
She looks up at them with drooping lids, eyes mostly unseeing, her hair a series of dark, straight lines down past her ears; like a kid’s drawing, all angular and simple.  
  
Sam nudges him on with a tap to the shoulder.  
  
Where the way in was quiet as a sky waiting to break open; the central part of the District is a street fair, overstuffed with people and their wares; a ragtag mix of those who scratch out their lives in the place because they’ve been left no choice, and those who come to peddle to them. A black market, thriving and dying by turns.  
  
It’s all meaningless noise and shoulders bumping, lit by hanging bulbs and coloured lanterns strung up on wiring; people giving up whatever they’ve got in exchange for what they need more at that particular moment; dregs of society, clinging on.  
  
Dean feels more than sees Sam’s hand inch closer to his gun.  
  
Smoke rises from a grill, hiss of pilfered rations being charred darker, the slosh from plastic jugs filled with water, people huddled around, reaching out.  
  
As they head through, Dean clocks the source of faint music, weaving in beats and pulses around and through the din; a few guys gathered by a wall, hoods pulled up like cowls and heads bent together.  
  
“C’mon,” Sam says, low and practically against the shell of Dean’s ear. “Let’s not stick around here, huh?” He’s tense, Dean can feel it buzzing between them like static. He doesn’t know if it’s the risk of them being seen in public - even ‘public’ on this low a rung - or if it’s the general claustrophobic atmosphere setting him off.  
  
He nods, picks up the pace, lets his breath pool warmth into his collar, fading into chill.  
  
The bar takes up the width of a long, blunt, dead-ended street; a corridor of potholed dark and garbage-strewn sidewalk, overhung with girders and other detritus. It glows, like an oasis in the grey haze, and Dean doesn’t wanna dwell on the feeling that they’re returning someplace welcoming, the way the Roadhouse or Bobby’s place had been.  
  
A sign hangs over the doorway, crooked like an axe frozen mid-swing. Two of the six bulbs along it’s length have been burned out for as long as Dean can remember.  
  
It’s fractionally warmer inside, light spilling from overhead fixtures, the low hum of random chitchat. People clustered in twos and threes offer up cursory glances and turn their backs. The air is still, soured by cigarette smoke and the wide-ranging smell of too many people passing through a place.  
  
 _They’re as much of a group as they can stand to be_ , he thinks.  
  
“I’ll ask around, see if anybody’s heard anything new,” Sam says, looking this way and that around the large, high-ceilinged room.  
  
“Be careful,” Dean says with a nod, then wants to roll his eyes at himself. Like Sam needs telling. Stupid habits.  
  
Sam smirks, which nearly makes the girly little slip worth it, but doesn’t say anything as he breaks off and heads for a cluster of five people spaced around a wobbling circular table near one wall, a deck of cards scattered between them and what look like MRE’s in the middle. Dean hopes Sam knows better than to hustle these people out of too much stuff; they’re here for information, not to start a goods brawl.  
  
Dean makes for the shiny, pockmarked semicircle of the bar, the thick shelving behind is backlit ghostly blue, diffracted through bottles and scattering out of place rainbows over the wood.  
  
The dude manning the bar is a whole other story.  
  
“Hey Dex,” Dean says, leaning his forearms onto the surface and taking a quick side-eye of the rest of the patrons. “Not exactly shooting over your maximum capacity, huh? You run out of good booze at last? Black market stop putting out for ya?”  
  
Dex is a tall, sturdy guy in his late fifties. He’d look pretty badass just from the stern, ex-army face that’s always uncomfortably close to their dad’s default expression, plus the long-faded pink burn scars that run from above his left eye to the edge of his chin, like morbid abstract art, and the stretching creases of other damage that spreads from his neck beneath the collar of his black shirt.  
  
But adding to all that’s the unnaturally sharp glint of that left eye; a shade too pale grey and ringed in too harsh a blue to be organic, and the thick, roping black tensor cords and cables of the arm on that same side; dull grey plates forming the back of his hand and spartanly economic joints along each square-tipped digit.  
  
He’s living proof that the military’s early upgrade programs for wounded soldiers saved lives. But there’s a pretty big difference between being alive and having a life that’s worth living. S’not his call to make, though, and Dex has been damn good to the people in this slum; the closest thing they’ve got to a de facto leader.  
  
Dex gives him a rueful smile, and Dean tries to remember to look him in both eyes.  
  
“They keep their word,” Dex says, his voice low and almost rasping; basically the definition of ‘don’t fuck with me’. “So long as I keep forking over a ‘reasonable’ percentage of whatever I scrape together. Like I’m running a damned speakeasy and not a hole at the bottom of a pit.” He scoffs, and there’s a low whirr from his forearm as he levers himself away from the bar with a push, pours amber from a dirty bottle into a dirtier glass, sets it down in front of Dean’s clasped hands.  
  
Dean hums commiseration as he knocks back what has to be jet fuel, turns the glass in his fingers, feels over a crack that’s spread right to the base.  
  
“So what’s with the ghost town routine?” he asks, sets his glass down.  
  
Dex leans forward again, light catching sparks off the regulation buzz cut that’s so white it’s like pure silver.  
  
“They’ve been stepping up the raids,” he murmurs, like he’s trying not to tip off the patrons who must’ve been there for it all anyway. “Not just every month or two; sometimes it’s three times a fortnight now. We lost eight people the last time, five more got pretty roughed up.” He shakes his head, and gulps down his own drink like it’s tap water.  
  
“So why the sudden escalation?”  
  
Dex shakes his head, but the pinch of his mouth is telling. “There’s a lot of talk about malfunctioning augs. More than usual, I mean,” he adds as Dean goes to comment. The District was practically founded on malfunctioning augs. “People’re saying it’s spreading, like a disease; getting worse and more sudden. That the raids are meant to cover up how many new faces are ending up here; like Roman’s rent-a-cops are keeping us off balance for something. There’s rumours about full-blown aug psychosis just popping up outta nowhere. It’s nothing we ain’t heard before, mind you, but we‘ve never drawn this amount of heat. Makes people invent truths ‘cause they can‘t take the not knowing.”  
  
He’s trying to play it off, dismiss it like idle gossip; but his voice has dropped again and he’s eyeing the people gathered around the room; slow flick of his focus from point to point, ring of blue at the edge of his iris flickering, turning quicker.  
  
“And you can’t get any of ‘em into the emergency shelters? I thought they were still taking the suits and high society types at least? People who got something to bribe their way in with; low people in high places and all that.”  
  
Another headshake, sharp and more than a little angry; bitter. “They don’t wanna know. ‘Overburdened’; s’what they always say. No room at the inn these days; for anybody. S’why we got neighbourhoods like these in the first place. Not one of us here ‘cause we got alternatives, Dean.” He flattens his palms on the counter, pale, strong fingers and cold grey metal ones contrasting; deep sigh that makes Dean feel like a jackass for even asking.  
  
“Look man, anything we can do, you know that. All you gotta do is ask.” It’s a sincere offer, even if it is all will and no means.  
  
Dex gives him a tired smile, appreciation even for ineffective help. “You just do what you do best,” he says. “Give ‘em hell, slow ‘em down wherever you can. We’ll hold our own.”  
  
Dean huffs a laugh despite himself. This is why he’s always liked Dex; that unshakable impression that he’d wander into Hell with a squirt gun and an accepting nod, shoulders squared and head high.  
  
“You don’t have to worry about us,” Dean says. “Take care of your people; we got each other’s backs.”  
  
“I don’t doubt,” Dex nods. “But I got eyes, Dean. I see those gloves; I read the body language. How’s Sam doing?”  
  
Dean leans away from the counter a little, holds the stare Dex is levelling at him. “He’s fine. Fine as we ever are. You know we lost Bobby.” Not a question, but Dex nods anyway, lips pressed a little tighter, crease between his eyes. “It’s… it’s what it is. We deal, we keep going. That’s it.” He wishes it felt true, less like a rope bridge over a fast current; missing planks.  
  
“There’s no denying you can’t just stop still and let shit run you down,” Dex says. “But what happened ain’t going away just ‘cause you slap some leather over it. Dean--” he pauses, considering, and Dean’s spine is an iron bar, rigid between his shoulders. “If he’s seeing things, then-”  
  
“It’s not psychosis,” Dean sticks into the sentence like a blade, solid in his hands. “Yeah okay, he’s still wearing the gloves, but c’mon man; you can‘t expect… after what happened? He’ll get there.”  
  
“By ignoring it?”  
  
“By fighting. By doing what we’ve always done. What we do best, remember?” He flings the words back, but Dex’s patient stare doesn’t falter.  
  
“I’m not trying to burn a bridge here,” Dex sighs. “Really I’m not. I know pretty much the whole resistance is on your shit list as is.” Dean must blink or start at that, Dex gives an almost fond smile and says; “Kevin. He came by last week, looking for some girl he knows who he thinks wound up here. He filled me in before he bugged out.” He sighs again, harder this time; weighted. “I’m just saying; whatever you shove down? It’s only got so far t’go. Eventually you’ll have to work through instead of past.”  
  
Dean nods, then shakes his head, the whole mess still sharp and burning in his gut. “Yeah, well, they basically told Sam ‘hey sorry you got tortured and all, but we can’t use you if you’re gonna be dropping marbles left and right’. Like half of that bunch aren’t three stops past Crazy Town already. Screw ‘em, we’ve been on our own more often than we‘ve had help. We’re fine. Sam’s fine. I’m fine.”  
  
He’s not sure what to call the look Dex gives him at that. All that fatherly disappointment bullshit is gathering dust in the back of his skull somewhere; old grievances buried along with the man himself.  
  
Luckily that’s when Sam appears, and Dean’s not sure whether to be proud of silent movement or kick him for making him jump like that.  
  
“Sam,” Dex nods, totally cool and collected. “How goes the good fight?”  
  
Dean really wants to be somewhere else now; not feeling like he’s been caught whispering behind his BFF’s back or some such shit.  
  
“I think that’s more your job description,” Sam says. It sounds easy, the way small talk is supposed to, Dean guesses. But Sam’s so tense Dean thinks that if you hit him with a hammer he’d shatter into bits.  
  
“Learn anything?” he asks, taking the silence by the reins.  
  
Sam gives a noncommittal shrug. “Rumours mostly. People disappearing, more psychosis cropping up than ‘normal’.” Dean can hear the air quotes, even though Sam’s hands are by his sides. Beneath the bar; out of sight. “There’s some new health initiative that Dick’s financing; with the UN; supposed to be a light at the end of the tunnel type thing. Nobody here’s buying it.” He tacks the last bit on with a twist of his lips.  
  
He looks older, like it’s a struggle to think where Dean’s seen him before.  
  
One of Dean’s knuckles cracks where he’s squeezed his hands too tight. He tries to breathe.  
  
“Yeah Dex was telling me there’s been some kinda crackdown,” Dean says, trying to keep Dex from asking pointed questions without it looking like he is.  
  
“You think they’re looking for resistance members?” Sam asks.  
  
Dean snorts “Hell, when aren’t they? There’s not a cop or private sector security douchebag in this country who’s not linked to Roman somehow at this point.”  
  
“Which means you two should probably cut down on the visitations,” Dex cuts in. “Don’t get me wrong; these little chats are fun and games but if we get raided while you’re here? The game’s over.”  
  
Sam just makes this accepting quirk with his eyebrows, and Dean feels the weight press down a little harder; walls closing in.  
  
“And on that note, we‘ll get outta your hair,” he says, pushing back from the bar and clapping Sam on the shoulder.  
  
Dex looks between them, the metal of his left thumb taps a beat on the countertop. “Good luck boys.”

  
~*~

  
Sam trails after Dean as they retrace their steps out of the District, trying not to get lost in his head again.  
  
They didn’t exactly leave on a positive note. Even a neutral one could’ve been called a win, but instead they’re basically getting out of dodge before the next wave of troops ransack the place.  
  
He’d seen the looks on the faces of the people he’d spoken to. Tired. Lost. Not so much desperate as reconciled. They’ve been left in the cold so long they’ve just gone numb.  
  
 _Are you so different?_  
  
Dean’s… someplace else. Whatever he’d been talking to Dex about at the bar - and Sam can guess, from the faraway guilt-worried look on Dean’s face that Sam could find in the dark at this point - has his shoulders tightened even more, the skin around his eyes pinched and his hands flexing like he wants to hit something.  
  
So of course it’s Sam that gets jumped.  
  
They fly at him outta nowhere from inside a dank alley, Dean already five or six paces ahead.  
  
A boot thuds hard into his ribs, forces the air from his lungs as pain throbs through his chest. He hears Dean’s shout, then a fist slams into his jaw and he spins from the force of it, blows landing across his back and stomach, eyes stinging and a high ringing in one ear, blood spattered from his nose.  
  
He kicks out, knocks one guy - there’s three of them, all in black hoods and steel-capped boots, each of them with different types of augs but with the same random, jumbled look - off his feet and back against the nearest brick wall, where he falls in a deadweight slump. He lands two good hits to the next dude’s face, but the other one still standing gets a knife to his throat, and he doesn’t dare twist with the tingle-itch of blood already rolling slowly down his neck.  
  
“Any closer, and he’s dead,” says the one holding the blade, cold metal of his hand pressing into the skin at the side of Sam’s neck. He’s talking to Dean.  
  
Dean’s got his Colt in one hand, his knife held in a reverse grip and his legs frozen mid-stride.  
  
Sam forces himself to meet his eyes, the barest nod even with the razor sting of the knife at his throat.  
  
“He dies; you die.” Dean’s voice is steady, low and rumbling; honest.  
  
There’s fear in his eyes though, if you know where to look for it.  
  
Sam can’t see the two that are still conscious; they’re both either behind him or off to one side, and he can’t turn without digging the knife in.  
  
“You’re aug lifters, right?” Dean asks, derisive and with a practiced smirk. “You go after people for their upgrades; cut ‘em out and leave ‘em bleeding to death where they drop? That how you pay your way?” He snorts and widens the smirk a little. “Bunch’a walking hatchet jobs, you can’t even make the news feeds.”  
  
The guy mutters a curse and almost moves enough for Sam to duck around and out of his grip.  
  
“Got the drop on your boy though,” the one not holding the knife says. His voice is muffled a little; probably distorted around the fat lip Sam gave him. “You just let us at whatever he’s hiding under those gloves and maybe you can walk out of this.”  
  
 _Their pound of flesh. Would it be worth it, do you think? Is Dean worth it, to you? How about to himself?_  
  
“The next finger you lay on him is the first one you’re gonna lose,” Dean promises, easy; silver flash of the serrated blade in his hand. He’s barely a foot closer, making tiny slide-steps at random.  
  
Sam pushes meaning into the stare between them, the tiniest rocking gesture with his left hand; back and forth and then again. He sees Dean notice it, all the tiny shifts in his posture.  
  
“You sure you wanna do that?” Sam asks them, movements of his throat shifting the tip of the blade over his skin. “You haven’t even checked what augs I’ve got. You willing to die for a useless bit of hardware?”  
  
A cold laugh echoes.  
  
Knife Guy shifts a little, and Sam doesn‘t let the wince show. “You don’t look like the type to be carrying useless tech,” he says, and in his periphery Sam can barely make out where the skin gets redder halfway up his forearm; the foul, sour hint of necrosis he’d been writing off as just another District odour until now. There’s a tremble creaking in one of the grey cords at his wrist, barely noticeable in the touch of the knife.  
  
Knife Guy’s got aug rejection. That’ll work in their favour, if he can time the move just right.  
  
“Still,” Dean jumps in, another tiny step that only Sam seems to notice. “S’it worth the bullets and the knife wounds and the broken bones? Just take the gloves off, you’ll see.”  
  
The second guy suddenly leans around and snags Sam’s hand at the wrist, tiny bones grinding as the glove on his normal hand gets yanked off and tossed aside. Trying to turn away when he feels his left hand being reached for only has Knife Guy pressing down harder into his neck, another cooling trail of blood running slowly down to his shirt with the fresh bite of pain.  
  
As soon as his left hand gets caught in that same grip, he shudders involuntarily and an icy wave of nausea rolls through him; sudden irrational panic and a wounded animal kind of fear.  
  
 _Fear without flesh is an illusion, Sam. I taught you better than this._  
  
The glove twists and bunches, would probably be uncomfortable if he could feel anything more than a vague pressure there; a sense that something is moving over the white, artificial skin of his hand.  
  
The glove drops to the ground with a tiny, dry flap of a noise, and the relentless pinch of the knife goes slack right as the second guy gasps and almost yells; “Shit, that’s Levi gear!”  
  
Sam turns ninety degrees and barges his shoulder hard into Knife Guy’s chest, swings his left elbow down hard into the guy’s still-outstretched arm; right at the decaying join with his aug. He cries out at the impact and reels back further, knife clattering to the floor as he doubles over in pain, and Sam doesn’t slow or bother to look as three shots ring out in quick succession, puncturing the air and retorting between the walls, rebounding off of concrete like claps of thunder.  
  
The remaining lifter tries to rush around Sam and back into the shadow of the alley, but Sam kicks out at his ankle and sends him sprawling on a disjointed spin, at the same time he balls his left hand into a fist and swings as hard as he can.  
  
With a sickening, wet crunch, the poor bastards jaw caves and his cheekbone shatters, a high scream that cuts off as he crumples to the floor and goes still, pool of red forming beneath his off-angled head.  
  
Sam’s breathing hard, the skin of his neck’s tacky and pulling with the drying blood. He’s staring down at the violently bright red streaking the grey-white joins of his knuckles, the spatters on the back of his hand. Some of it meets the seamless join of his wrist, where the skin’s still paler than his forearm; tiny hairs matted with crimson drops.

“-of here okay? Sammy? Sam!” He’s shaking. No, Dean’s shaking him. Standing scant inches from his face and holding one hand near Sam’s neck, not touching but almost. There’s that fear in his eyes again, turning the green brighter, sharper.  
  
“W-What?” he manages, the prickle of his own eyes reminding him to blink. The blood on his neck’s going cold. His left hand is aching even though it can’t be.  
  
“We gotta go,” Dean says, slowly and too intense; like the syllables need time to sink through.  
  
Sam nods, and the collection of cuts along his neck itch-sting with the movement. His thoughts are fogged and distant, obscured.  
  
He’s alive.  
  
 _How can you tell, really?_  
  
As he takes a few stumbling steps forward, he turns and looks at the three collapsed bodies they’re leaving behind. One of them’s not dead, he reminds himself like benediction. As he turns back toward Dean, he gets a glimpse of someone else leaning against a wall, hands stuffed into the pockets of a pure white lab coat. Even with the muddied blur of his peripheral vision, Sam can tell he’s smiling.  
  
Dean’s fist stays clenched in the fabric of Sam’s jacket, fingers flexing against Sam’s shoulder as he tugs them both on, gun still held out from his side in the other hand. It makes it hard to walk, and the collar of his undershirt rubs over the knife marks with every other step, but Sam doesn’t say anything.  
  
He all but gets thrown into the passenger’s seat, Dean slamming the door while Sam sits and picks the flaking blood from the back of his hand, not really feeling it, but the implant tells him he’s being touched anyway, like a memory of sensation more than anything present.  
  
The gloves are still in the alley, he realises for the first time with a swift uprush of anxiety. He almost shoves his hands under his thighs, feels the urge to sandwich them between his legs and the threadbare upholstery like a yawning pit in his gut, the thought repeated over and over inside his head, getting louder.  
  
“Sam,” Dean says, low and jolting, and Sam comes back to himself with a dragging inhale as his chest burns and the forming bruises over his torso throb with his heartbeat.  
  
There’s laughter somewhere, echoing.  
  
“Yeah I’m… I’m here,” he says, thumb tracing over the smoothness of his palm, the gentle ridges at the edge of each knuckle. No damage at all from the wrecking ball of a punch he threw.  
  
 _Aren’t you better like this? Enhanced? Harder to break?_  
  
“I’m fine,” he says, and Dean’s jaw works as he breathes slow through his nose, control exercise.  
  
He makes a point of resting his hands on his thighs, keeps Dean’s eye and hold it.  
  
Dean starts the car, and Sam times his breathing; in and out, nice and even.

  
~*~

  
They get back to the room, and Dean just stands in the middle of the floor as Sam uses a damp rag to wipe the blood from his skin; his hands; his neck.  
  
Jesus, they can’t keep this up. They’re supposed to be finding a way to stop Dick, not getting themselves damn near killed by random, aug stealing nutbags.  
  
“I need to check you over,” he says, party ‘cause Sam just got wailed on by three guys with at least two augmented arms between ‘em, and partly ‘cause it’s easier to say than the other hundred defeatist thoughts butting up behind his teeth; grinding at the spaces between his molars like grit.  
  
“I’m fine,” Sam answers, too quiet over the scrub of the rag, the patter of water into their lousy excuse for a sink.  
  
“Sam,” Dean grumbles, trying his best to do this without starting another stupid back and forth that moves them nowhere.  
  
Sam’s never liked the one-to-one first aid aspect of their lives. Even when it was their dad patching them both up, or Dean taking care of Sam back when he was a kid and then a teenager, he’s always hated that remote kind of focus being aimed at him. The stitches and bandages and salves were all minor annoyances to be played off with jokes between clenched teeth; dislocated joints shoved back into place and - once this whatever-it-is thing started between them, and assuming they had running hot water - shared showers to wipe away muck and blood and sweat.  
  
But since Sam’s stint in that fucking hellhole of a lab, it’s only gotten worse. Dean doesn’t know if it’s the medical side of it - the antiseptic smell or the feel of gauze, the needles - or just being clinically checked over, but he’s tried to let Sam take care of himself since then, even with every ingrained response to Sam being injured railing at him like a siren in his skull.  
  
This time though, he just can’t do it. Not when he had to watch a deranged psycho shove a blade against his brother’s throat, saw the lifeblood start to seep out.  
  
Sam crosses the space out of their closet of a bathroom, boots kicked off and nudged by the doorway that’s missing an actual door. He’s out of his topmost layer, and as he tugs the tee shirt off Dean can already see the purplish marks dotting across his ribs and low on his stomach, spreading around to his back and mottling between his shoulders. Added to the ones already visible on his jaw, the stark white of his one hand, and that feeling of looking at a stranger is sneaking up on Dean like slow curls of smoke along a ceiling; creeping vines.  
  
Except he’s not a stranger. It’s Sam.  
  
It’s always been Sam.  
  
“You should probably sit,” Dean says with a nod to the rickety bed as he pulls the first aid kit from a duffle he’d hauled outta the trunk of the car.  
  
Sam’s leaning back a little with his hands - so weird seeing ‘em without the gloves, Dean’s having a hard time not staring - splayed behind him. He’s staring at the middle distance a little glazed, but his breathing’s even and he doesn’t have that startled deer expression that’s usually the tip-off for the hallucinations.  
  
Dean considers the pathetic little chairs they scavenged for the room before just sighing and kneeling by the bed, the frame so close to the floor it’s not even at mid-thigh on him.  
  
He’s silent as he hands over a couple pills for the pain, checks the rapidly darkening marks on Sam’s skin as gentle as he can manage.  
  
“Nothing broken,” he murmurs as he checks his brother’s ribs, fingers running over the arch of bones and trying not to reflexively pull back at Sam’s pained hiss. “Or cracked, far as I can tell. S’gonna be a bitch laying down for a while though.”  
  
“I’m fine, Dean. Really,” Sam says, and he looks twice his normal gigantor size with Dean looking up the length of him like this.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean huffs.  
  
They’re always fine.  
  
He makes to stand, but Sam reaches out and stops him dead with a hand resting on Dean’s shoulder. He looks about as surprised by the abrupt move as Dean feels.  
  
There’s a second - two, three; like portraits of awkwardness - where they’re just staring at each other, Dean crouched awkwardly to the side of Sam’s legs, the warmth of his hand seeping through Dean’s shirt, tiny movement of his fingers like he’s caught between pulling back and gripping tighter.  
  
“I’ll be okay,” Sam says, and it’s too loaded with understanding; too damn heartfelt, and Dean has no idea how they got here.  
  
“You just keep… over and over again, and I’m always… ” he swallows past the sandpapery lump forming in his throat.  
  
 _I’m always too slow, he finishes in his head. And one of these days it’ll be a forever deal._  
  
Sam’s hand squeezes his shoulder; hard enough to shake him free of the looping thought he’s wandered into, and it’s breaking the surface when he was so sure he was gonna drown; air flooding him like light and it hurts even though he needs it; wants it more than he can remember wanting anything.  
  
“ _Dean_ ,” Sam breathes, and just like that Dean’s moving in a fluid rise that pops his knees until he’s standing bent at the waist, and his hands are on the warm skin of Sam’s wide shoulders and the desperation is fire in his belly, crashing them together.  
  
Sam makes a high, animal sound when their lips meet, then his hand’s roaming over Dean’s back, restless and spanned wide between his shoulders as Dean fits his fingers over the blotched bruises on his brother’s jaw; like his fingerprints can reshape them. He licks into Sam’s mouth, tugs his jaw wider and pushes in closer, the bed already creaking in ignored protest.  
  
Dean’s tongue flicks over the bumps of those smooth teeth, the ridges of his palate and the slickness of Sam’s tongue; takes in the taste of him and shares their combined breath between them.  
  
He pulls back enough to nudge their foreheads together, the rub of skin and hot fan of air from Sam’s kiss-swollen mouth tingling over his own, almost dizzying. When Sam leans back in and claims Dean’s mouth again, it’s softer; wet cling of lips and a stroke of tongue that has Dean realising how hard he is just from this; how much it feels like getting daylight after years of going without.  
  
Sam pulls at Dean’s overshirt until he drags it off and tosses it aside, wedges himself between the spread of Sam’s legs and pulls his brother in, holds him in place as he licks into his mouth again, all that hot slickness and perfect noises loosed from the back of Sam’s throat.  
  
It takes Dean a few minutes of nipping at Sam’s lips and sucking on his tongue, stroking over whatever unbruised skin he can reach, to realise why the balance of their impromptu make out session doesn’t feel quite right.  
  
Sam’s left hand is shoved awkwardly behind the muscular wall of his body, kept out of the way.  
  
“Hmm, Sam,” he manages between one kiss and the next, “it’s okay; you can… here.” He reaches out slowly, makes his movements obvious even to Sam’s muzzy gaze, not breaking eye contact all the while.  
  
By the time his fingers brush the slightly warm back of Sam’s augmented hand, his brother’s gone totally, completely still; even his breath stopped still mid-inhale. Dean looks up at him; the blown-black pupils and the flush riding high over his cheekbones, hair straggling from his temple onto his forehead and the lines of his abdomen tense, waiting.  
  
“You’re fine,” Dean says, his fingers sliding ever so slightly further across the back of Sam’s hand. He’s barely touched it since those first few days, and never this deliberately; this intentionally without having another reason.  
  
As his palm fits over the smooth back, fingers curling slightly around and under, he leans up and kisses Sam again; almost pointedly even though it’s stupidly soft; the way they’ve never really been no matter how far back you look. Sam responds sluggishly, distracted, and Dean has no idea how much of this he can actually feel, but he squeezes the ‘meat’ of his brother’s hand, and Sam gasps against Dean’s lips like it’s the most surprising thing he’s ever felt.  
  
“C’mon,” he almost whispers as he draws Sam’s arm out and in front of him, and he’d feel ridiculous; kneeling on the floor like this holding hands, if it weren’t for the stunned look that Sam’s levelling at him without even trying to cover it up. He’s completely exposed, Dean realises; stripped barer than the naked skin on display can even begin to account for.  
  
Sam takes a shaky breath, his free hand twitching and left awkward on his thigh. “Dean, I don’t… just, be careful okay? I don’t wanna-”  
  
“You won’t,” Dean says, low but firm, because yeah he watched Sam cave in a guy’s head like popping a paper sack not even an hour ago, but he’s not worried Sam’ll hurt him. They’re better at hurting each other than anyone else has ever managed, but Dean’s still here and Sam’s still here, and if they don’t do this then they’re never gonna be _them_ again.  
  
Dean’s willing to admit that Dex might’ve had a point.  
  
Practically in slow motion, Dean plants Sam’s hand on the curve where his neck meets his shoulder, fingers crosshatched and thumbs in opposition, presses down with a meaningful look and watches the long roll of Sam’s throat as he swallows hard, nods just enough to be noticeable.  
  
Letting go in tiny increments, Dean gets Sam to maintain the exchange of kisses; draws Sam’s tongue into his mouth and makes as much encouraging noise as he can feasibly manage that way. At the same time he skims his hands up the inside of Sam’s thighs, all dry heat through the denim of his jeans, thumb skimming a hole near the knee.  
  
“Dean,” Sam moans out. “You gotta… c’mon man.” He’s damn near panting, kisses turning sloppy, and the rush of blood to his dick is making Dean more than a little light-headed.  
  
He presses down over the obscenely outlined bulge at Sam’s crotch, takes the roughshod groan into his mouth and swallows it down, greedy.  
  
“Gonna suck you,” Dean hears himself say, like someone’s taken a belt sander to his vocal cords for how shredded and raw he sounds. Seems to work for Sam though, from the shudder that works down his body, the spasming clench of the smooth, cool fingers resting against Dean’s neck.  
  
“Jesus _fuck_ , Dean,” Sam whines as Dean scrapes his teeth over the length of tendon at his brother’s neck, sucks wetly at the edge of a pre-existing bruise before he folds lower and kisses a path down the bumps of muscle at Sam’s abs, fits a hand over his hip and traces the tips of his fingers beneath the waistband.  
  
A sharp tug and pull downward has the loose button of Sam’s jeans undoing and the zipper unthreading, Sam lifting from the hips to try and help while Dean tries to simultaneously lean into the pressure of Sam’s hands on him.  
  
He yanks Sam’s jeans and underwear down his thighs, shoulders pushing wider into the V between, wets his lips just to hear the sound Sam gives up for it.  
  
Fuck but he’s almost forgotten how much he gets off on this; taking his brother apart with hands and mouth and cock; whatever else he can think of, the sense of rightness that he’s only really found when they’re connected like this.  
  
Sam’s still most of the way hard - probably flagged when Dean went off-script with the whole hand thing - but still hotter than a summer in Hades when he twitches under Dean’s scrutiny and bites off a noise like he’s trying his damndest not to beg.  
  
Dean plants sucking kisses to the hard delineation of muscle between Sam’s thigh and his groin, breathes in the pure smell of Sam that’s never been bested by anything else in Dean’s experience.  
  
He groans shameless and slutty around that first push of Sam’s cock head through the ring of his lips, sliding over his tongue and slipping against the roof of his mouth; sucks and feels the swell of his brother’s dick as he takes him deeper; the musky, pure sex scent heady in his nostrils as he drags air down into his lungs.  
  
Sam’s body ripples under his hands as Dean takes his cock deeper into his throat, practically fucks his mouth on it ‘til Sam’s stone-hard and leaking bittersweet against the back of his tongue; rubs that slick muscle along the underside, draws back up to press the tip hard into the slit, feels the blurt of more precome as Sam whimpers all desperate through his teeth.  
  
Dean’s got a hand grinding down onto his own dick, painfully constricted in his jeans and leaking a wet spot through the fabric that’s cooling and sparking sensation along his nerves as he bobs and sinks down again and again, twists on the downstroke and sucks harder at the soft skin stretched tight over heat, tracing veins.  
  
Sam’s cradling Dean’s head in those paws of his like he’s made of fragile china, fingers fitted around the back of his head but offering up no pressure; threading through the bristles of Dean’s hair and stroking over the hollows of his cheeks, the curve of his lips where all that hard flesh is snugged up inside of him, pressing at the back of his throat like breathing is just something other people do; irrelevant so long as he can keep Sam like this.  
  
When Sam really starts to shake - like full on rattling, as if all the bolts and screws holding him together are working loose - Dean draws back enough that just the slick, flared head is held behind the seal of his lips. He looks up at his brother’s face, gleaming with sweat and the pink of his mouth slack and inviting, and swirls his tongue around that leaking slit as he stares up, almost defiant from under his lashes.  
  
Sam comes just as his fingers stroke down the side of Dean’s neck, almost caressing like he’s trying to feel the scalding pulses of release as he shoots across Dean’s tongue; feeling for the bob of Dean‘s throat as he drinks him down, even as Sam throws his head back and chokes out a ruined mash up of a grunt and a wail, all snapped into breathy pieces and cast into the air. Dean works him through it; gentler, easier suction as he swallows and rolls Sam’s balls in his hand, middle finger pressing at the stretch of tight skin behind to draw it out as long as he can.  
  
Pulling back with a rasping, heaving gulp of air, Dean claws and shoves his jeans outta the way and tugs at his dick rough and fast. Half a dozen tight strokes with his finger rubbing under the head and the taste of Sammy in his mouth is all it takes, before he tenses all over and shoots milky white onto the already none-too-clean carpet in scattershot lines that pulse from somewhere under his diaphragm, bending him double even on his knees; ‘til his forehead’s resting against the hard muscle of Sam’s thigh, gasping and trembling with his brother’s long fingers - both hands this time, and he’ll get to smiling about that when he can coordinate any of his body’s normal responses again - carding through his hair, down the back of his neck and over the knobbly, top bumps of his spine.  
  
They stay in that weird, slumped repose for a hazy, washed-out stretch of syrupy time, everything broken down to the smell of Sam’s skin and the musk of sex permeating the room, Dean’s breath loud where he’s basically collapsed into Sam’s body. The incline of Sam’s chest forms a distorted L, with his legs still spread out in front of him, jeans twisted ‘round his ankles and Dean kneeling in the void between.  
  
There’s a lassitude to the feel of Sam under his hands, a deep fatigue that’s been building but always packed under grim trudging through the mire of their lives; the ‘mission’ or whatever label you try and affix to it.  
  
For the first time in ages, Dean actually feels settled; right the way down to his bones.  
  
Like maybe they can do this.

  
~*~

  
They get about two seconds worth of determined banging on the door before it swings open and Jody steps in, rifle extended and cocked in one hand and the other balled like she’d use her fist before the gun anyway.  
  
She takes in the room; Dean on the opposite side of the small table with his Colt hastily drawn and aimed at the doorway, only lowered a little once he realised who it was, and Sam where he’s frozen in the entry of their tiny bathroom, knife pulled from the sheath at his ankle but gun out of reach, hair trailing water down the back of his neck in goose bump lines of chill.  
  
It’s the most pointless standoff Sam’s ever seen, but they don’t exactly entertain often, much less get visits from the resistance higher-ups. They’re still blacklisted after all, deemed too much of a security risk to cooperate with, ‘compromised’ or whatever the reasoning was.  
  
It might even be funny, if the room smelt a little less of sweat and sex from the day before.  
  
 _Do you think she knows? The things you and your brother do in the dark?_  
  
Jody takes them both in, eyes inscrutable with the light pouring in behind her, throwing long shadows against the carpet. She lowers the rifle at least - slowly - and then steps further in and gives them a wry smile. “Oh good, you’re not dead,” she says, voice the definition of cheery.  
  
Dean snorts, lets his gun hand fall to his side, knife clattering to the table in front of him. “What, that the resistance version of a ‘hello’ now? Man, you guys really lose all your manners running the underground, huh?”  
  
She couldn’t look less concerned with Dean’s snark if she tried. “Careful Dean; just ‘cause you’re on the outs with almost all the people on the planet doesn’t mean you get to whine about it. We all do what we have to.”  
  
“Oh sure,” Dean says, easy except for how it’s not at all, the tension in his jaw and the vibe he’s giving off like a coiled snake waiting to strike. “Make yourself at home; our casa es su casa, s’not like you’ve been screening our calls or cutting us off when _we_ needed something. But hey; bygones.” He’s standing on her side of the table now, Sam trailing around to join him as he slips the knife out of sight.  
  
Jody at least looks slightly apologetic, “I know you don’t owe us anything, and for what it’s worth I did my best to convince the others that-”  
  
“You closed ranks,” Dean says, “shut us down when we came to you for help, and left us out in the cold while you carried on in your cosy bunkers and tried to plan your way outta the end of the world. Now let me guess; you need our help?”  
  
“I didn’t make the decision, Dean,” she says, “I’m running one shelter, with one small group of people; I’m not the head honcho of the entire resistance. I had to go along with it or they’d have cut us off too. There’re kids in my group, Dean; families. It was a shitty situation, and I made a judgement call, that’s it.”  
  
“We tried to contact you about Bobby,” Sam tells her. “We left messages in a dead drop but I wasn’t sure if-”  
  
“Yeah I heard,” she nods, her mouth pinching. She’d been close to Bobby for a long time, maybe closer than Bobby ever outright admitted. “He was a damn good man,” she mutters with a sad shake of her head.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says, just as low, turning rough. “Yeah he was.”  
  
Sam thinks about the projector in Dean’s jacket where it’s thrown over one of the chairs, doesn’t know if they should try and tell Jody or just leave her with the impression that Bobby got a cleaner death than he did. More final.  
  
But Dean squares his shoulders and pushes a breath out from between his teeth, “This ain’t a social call then, I take it?”  
  
She shakes her head again, “I wish, but the bad news just keeps coming. Frank’s dead.”  
  
Sam’s heart clenches and his gut twists, cold flooding him. Dean looks just as shocked, his jaw going slightly slack and surprise running over his face.  
  
“You’re sure?” Dean asks even though it has to be true; no way Jody would come all the way out here otherwise.  
  
She nods, and sighs loud in the empty quiet, “It happened sometime in the last thirty-six hours. Charlie was the one who found out.”  
  
“Charlie?” Sam asks without really meaning to. "Since when are her and Frank best buds?”  
  
Jody gives him a ghost of a smile, “They’d been working on that mystery signal you boys and Bobby found out about. He wasn’t answering her calls, so she paid a discreet visit and found R.I. goons ransacking his place. She stuck around for half a day waiting for ‘em to leave, and then pulled a triple backup drive outta the wall that they missed. Everything else was either taken or trashed… and there was a lot of blood; too much. I’m sorry, but he‘s gone.”  
  
Dean looks like he wants to throw a punch, and Sam feels like his feet are growing roots into the ground, anchoring him still while his head spins.  
  
 _You’re afraid to be alone, but that’s your natural state isn’t it? Alone in a crowd, alone with your brother. Alone with the thoughts that cut at you in the night. What if being alone is the only way you_ can _survive?_  
  
“-am? Sammy? Hey.” Dean nudges him with one shoulder, and the walls of their room come rushing back so fast he almost falls flat on his ass.  
  
Jody’s giving him an unnamable look, and he’s basically just confirmed all the stuff the resistance was worried about hasn’t he?  
  
“Yeah,” he manages, too much of a whisper to be reassuring. “Sorry, I just. Too many ghosts.”  
  
Dean’s expression pinches before he nudges him again, a little firmer but less urgent, “Yeah we’re getting thinner on the ground day by day, here.” He turns back to Jody. "Did they make any progress on Bobby’s numbers? Anything we can use?”  
  
Jody shakes her head again, “They didn’t have enough time, but we’ve got another problem now; Frank had a lot of intel on the resistance, more than most. We’ve had to scrap half our drop sites and safe houses; burn the phones, even risk moving people to the District. It’s why I didn’t just call you, we can’t trust the lines of communication right now; Frank had your aliases and your contact numbers in his system, not to mention this location. You need to move; go somewhere unlisted.”  
  
“Great,” Dean grits out. "so we’re worse off than when we started. That’s awesome.”  
  
“Like I said, the bad news just keeps coming,” she says with a commiserating shrug. “Half the active people we have out there are scrambled and out of touch; Kevin’s in the wind somewhere in Seattle, Charlie’s gonna have to rebuild her own system from the ground up, and who knows how many others that we’ve got no way of tracking.”  
  
“Well we don’t exactly have a long list of alternatives,” Dean gripes with a gesture to the room around them.  
  
“Rufus’ place,” Sam mutters, thinking it over. "He had a hideout that Bobby mentioned; it’s been abandoned for years but that’s good, right? Frank probably didn’t know about it, so neither will Dick.”  
  
“Whatever works,” Jody says. “Just be quick about it, the moment Roman’s techs crack that drive they’re gonna come down on this place like a bag of hammers.”  
  
She reaches into her jacket, pulls out a thin, black box just bigger than the span of her palm and hands it to Dean. “That’s everything Frank had about that signal thing Roman’s working on; I had Charlie make you a copy. Don’t leave it lying around,” she adds with a warning finger pointing at Dean.  
  
“What about you?” Sam asks.  
  
She smiles, lets the barrel of her gun fall against her shoulder, “I’ve got people to take care of. You boys just… try not to die, huh?”  
  
Dean grins, and gives Sam a side glance, “We’ll do our best.”  
  
It’ll have to be enough.

  
~*~

  
They’re going through a god awful underground dead drop in the middle of a wooded nowhere when she finds them.  
  
Bad as the District gets, it’s still a step up from the foetid shells of warehouses and barren buildings that get repurposed by the resistance for caching supplies and intel for whoever’s in the area.  
  
This one’s more of an old fallout shelter than anything. Literally underground, and as much as Dean wants to enjoy the irony, the stink is kind of hard to ignore. It’s all featureless stone and stale air, a ladder missing three rungs bolted into one wall, leading up to the overgrown foundation of all that’s left of somebody’s house.  
  
He’s shifting crates around, looking for an energy cell that’ll fit the bizarre do-it-yourself system at Rufus’ place. For all his badass skills at working to bring down the aug corps, Rufus’ technical skill looks like a spare parts bin exploded all over his cabin.  
  
The naked bulb with it’s stringy chain is throwing creepy shadows along the floor, sending blue-green spots across Dean’s vision each time he turns toward it, drops another useless box of crap to the side.  
  
Sam’s up to his ears in stacks of old datapads, picking up one with a quick skim of his eyes before moving on to the next. Looking for contact info that’s been updated since they were last here.  
  
Since a load of the active resistance members got ganked, he reminds himself. Took the bastards less than two days to track down anyone Jody and her pals couldn’t warn in time, more names on a growing list. He forces the thought to the forefront, keeps it going. Brushwood on the pyre.  
  
Sam’s been sending him meant-to-be-furtive glances pretty much since they got the news.  
  
Dean’s been ignoring them.  
  
He finally finds the cell at the bottom of a box of flares. Snags those too. He tests the primer, a brief whine of charge building that fizzes along his molars, three little lights all wink on in a row of green.  
  
“Got it,” he crows, looking over at Sam as he shoves the thing into a backpack.  
  
Sam hums vaguely, frowning, datapad in each hand. He’s not wearing gloves, and that’s something. More of a something that Dean should be looking at when they’re losing the fight at an even faster rate than usual.  
  
“Nothing,” Sam murmurs, not looking up, his eyes intense and roving, busy. He looks like Sam.  
  
That’s when the hatch swings open on a rusty groan of hinges, and they both swing around; weapons pointed at the void in the roof before Dean even consciously thinks to move.  
  
The datapads click faintly as they hit the floor, then everything goes eerie silent.  
  
Dean’s heart hammers in his ears. He holds his breath on alternate beats, pushing control past the adrenaline, wills his hands to be steady.  
  
Five breaths. Ten. Nothing happens.  
  
Without breaking line of sight with the hatch, Dean steps forward as Sam steps back. Their arms brush, just barely. The glow of the bulb sears his retinas. He doesn’t blink.  
  
Still nothing. Faint call of a lonely bird, somewhere in the ruin above them.  
  
Their odds aren’t great, pretty damn lousy in fact. They’re penned in, surrounded by concrete, their one exit compromised. It’d only take a single frag charge tossed down here with them; instant powder keg. Death in a bottle.  
  
They stand their ground.  
  
“Come on out boys,” suddenly floats down through the opening in a slow, easy drawl. American. Female. Tells him nothing.  
  
“We’re good, thanks,” he replies, stance widening a little, finger hovering just over the trigger.  
  
“If I was planning to kill you, you’d be hamburger already. I’m not a huge fan of being kept waiting, so if we could hurry this along. Saves me busting out the stun grenades.” All said easy, casual. Verging on bored.  
  
Dean’s honestly a little insulted.  
  
“Dean?” Sam pipes up, low and tense. Quick dart of his eyes that Dean feels more than sees.  
  
“Sam?” Dean answers, returns the look, eyes flicking straight back to the open hatch down the barrel of the 9mm.  
  
“Any thoughts?” Sam asks, gun hand unwavering, squinting in the light.  
  
“A few,” Dean answers. “Most of ‘em pretty negative.”  
  
Sam snorts without moving.  
  
He considers the little patch of desolate sky, only the fainted kiss of orange light pollution. He catalogues the room, the total lack of cover. The trace of warmth from Sam’s side.  
  
“Screw it,” he grunts, somewhat to himself, moves in two clean paces almost right underneath the hatch. He thinks he can hear a motor running, the low pitch of it in the background.  
  
Sam stands at his back, edgy vibes all down Dean’s spine like nails on a chalkboard.  
  
Dean makes it up the ladder, skipping half the rungs and keeping his head on a swivel. There’s a pair of dim headlights off to the side of the house, faint off-white glow through the patchy brickwork.  
  
He pulls himself out with a hand flat to the gritty earth, gun held level and waiting.  
  
Moving up from a crouch, he waves the okay to Sam, turns in a slow circle as his brother heaves himself over the lip of the hatchway.  
  
Both standing, almost back-to-back, they wait.  
  
“Well now, isn’t it much better when we all just trust one another?” They swing around. Scrape of dry, dead soil beneath their feet.  
  
A woman resolves out of an inky stretch of shadow near the house, steps not quite silent across the ground. _Untrained. Disadvantage_ , he thinks. Clicks the hammer back.  
  
Her hands are stuffed into the pockets of her jeans, thumbs resting along her belt, dark hair falling over the shoulders of her leather jacket. There’s a hint of a smirk on her face.  
  
Even in the dusky light, her eyes are black as pitch.  
  
“DEMON,” Dean says, loud enough to carry, notes Sam adjust his aim.  
  
She smirks wider. Predatory.  
  
“Please Dean; it’s rude to refer to people by their augs. Didn’t your daddy ever teach you that?” Sam’s hand lands on his wrist in the same moment Dean’s arm extends a little, finger brushing the trigger. The anger sits, boiling in his skull.  
  
Dean wants to shake off the touch.  
  
“How’d you find us?” Sam asks, no less pissed, loosing his hold on Dean and reaiming.  
  
“That’s not really the issue,” she says. “You should be asking why I schlepped out here to the boonies in the first place. Despite the media hype, you two really aren’t that interesting.” Disdainful sneer, and still she looks less out of place in the crumbled wreckage than Dean’s ever managed.  
  
“Okay then, why? If we’re so boring why track us down?” Sam asks, slight shift of his grip, leather creaking.  
  
She blinks once. Her eyes lose the creepy multispectral filters making ‘em look like gaping voids into her head. Doesn’t humanise her in the least.  
  
“You’re a smart boy, Sam,” she says, somehow more threatening than all the talk about grenades had been. “Figure it out.” She steps closer again, and Dean picks out three spots along her forehead. Where shots’ll likely slow her down the most.  
  
She passes through a thready beam of light from the idling car, and Sam makes a disbelieving noise that shoves Dean’s hackles up further.  
  
“Dr Masters?” Sam asks, soaked in confusion. Dean’s getting that way himself.  
  
Then it clicks. The memory slotting, scraping into place like a knife between the ribs.  
  
“Meg Masters? The scientist?” Dean’s voice dropping a little as the old, practically ingrained anger rises like bile.  
  
She smiles, toothful. “Well done Dean. Now let’s lower the guns and talk, hmm?” Sam twitches.  
  
“Oh I’m thinking putting you down’s gonna be the highlight of my day,” Dean drawls around his own sneer, sighting down the body of the Colt.  
  
“Dean, if she’s who she says she is, and she’s got DEMON tech in her, then…” Sam’s voice dies away, and yeah Dean’s gets the idea. Dermal armour, medical nanites, hidden weapons. Eyes that see thermal, UV; the whole range. All’a that fun stuff that used to make DEMONs the ideal military aug until Leviathans came along.  
  
“Your little peashooter won’t kill me, Dean. Sorry.” She’s too close now, almost in reach.  
  
“Might help me come to terms with you still breathing though,” he says, smiles tight-lipped at her.  
  
“And who do you think’s been harbouring me this whole time?” she asks. “Who helped me fake my death, gave me a chance to turn this whole thing around? A lot of us defected to the underground after you took down Azazel. And then again after Crowley lost everything when Dick took over. I’m actually here to help you.” She says it with almost as much distaste as Dean’s feeling. Almost.  
  
“You defected?” Sam jumps in. “You? You started all this. The biochip system was your idea. Your plan.”  
  
“Azazel’s plan,” she counters. “And at the time I was on board with it. You think the old anti-rejection drug scheme was any better? Of all people, you two should understand how bad that ended up.”  
  
Now Dean really wants to shoot her. He can count how long it’s been since either of them so much as mentioned their mother in a scale of years.  
  
“You wanted power,” Dean says, dismissive. “Fame and glory and millions of dollars. Praise for all your hard work. What makes you any better than Dick?”  
  
“That’s why I’m here.” Her hands come out of her pockets, arms out from her sides like surrender. “You need to trust that for now, our goals coincide. Call it synergy.”  
  
Dean’s gun is a tempting weight.  
  
“You want us to trust you?” Sam asks, like it leaves a foul taste behind. “None of this would even be happening if it wasn’t for you. There’d be no District. No aug psychosis. Maybe even no Leviathans. Why should we trust anything you say?” There’s a tremble running down the length of his arm, terminating in the barrel of the .45. The white of his hand is a ghost against the darker skin of the one holding the gun.  
  
“There are things about to happen,” Masters starts. “Dick’s plan; the one the underground wanted me to help stop. The one Frank asked me to help you with.” That draws Dean’s attention a little.  
  
“The signal?” he asks.  
  
She nods, just enough to be noticeable. “That’s the final step. There’s lots of other nasty surprises coming first; more nails in the coffin. Frank sent us the data, and when I realised what it was, I knew they’d be gunning for anyone who’d seen it.”  
  
“Nice of you to help out,” Dean says, nearly too flat to hold the sarcasm. “You got any idea how many good people died in those raids?”  
  
“And don’t you want to know why?” she asks. “Not just the trade secrets you got your paws on, but because they couldn’t get to you. No one knows where you are. I only found you because I’ve been going by every uncompromised, unlisted dead drop in the state since poor old Frank got wasted. They lost their bead on you, so instead they went after everyone you know.”  
  
“Taking out our support system. Trying to stop us,” Sam concludes, grim as death.  
  
She nods again. Dean bites down on the curse, the urge to throw a punch. Tries to think past the sickening guilt.  
  
“What do you want?” Dean finally asks, gun dipping slightly, every instinct protesting.  
  
“I want to help you bring down Dick,” she answers immediately, fervently. “I have an idea how, but there’s a price on my head and I need a safe house. Backup. Time to work. Now we can either cooperate, or watch the rest of this crummy little planet get squashed under Dick’s heel.” She’s looking between them, and Dean wants her to be lying. Wants to empty the clip and get the fuck away from this entire conversation.  
  
But Sam was right. This is bigger than them. It always has been.  
  
“What’s your idea?” Sam asks, reluctant, before Dean can.  
  
“Not here.” She takes in their less-than-secure locale. “I’m guessing you have a hideout somewhere? A place even the rest of the underground didn’t know about?”  
  
Sam lets out a grating sigh, gun lowering, slow.  
  
Dean pulls a crumpled notepad from his jacket, scribbles down the address, hands it to her. Keeps telling himself it’s not a mistake until the words sound like truth.  
  
She looks at it, turns it over a few times like a card dealer. Then gives them both a rueful smile and saunters off in the direction of her car, unhurried as can be.  
  
“What’d we just do?” Sam asks, as the taillights fade to pinpoints of ruby red.  
  
“Not exactly sure,” Dean sighs, rolls his lips between his teeth. “But one’a these days, I’m gonna ask you to buy back my soul.”  
  
Dean’s expecting to see her waiting for them when they pull up, but it’s all quiet. No light, save for the ambient city illumination in the middle distance. The moon’s a ghostly face, casting borrowed silver.  
  
He’s having regrets already.  
  
He tells Sam as much, watches him pinch his lips, rap of fingers over his knee. Four beats. He doesn’t say anything.  
  
The energy cell fits perfectly though. If they’re about to get taken out Butch and Sundance style, they’ll at least have good lighting.  
  
Dying in the dark just doesn’t sound like as much fun.  
  
“So what now?” Sam asks, standing near the table, scratching idly at his cheek, faint rasp of stubble.  
  
It’s a good question.  
  
“I dunno, dude,” Dean says, helpless shrug. “Maybe wait ‘til morning and then head out again? See if we can dig up something on this endgame of Dick’s?”  
  
Sam nods, running a hand through his hair. Dean listens to the snags, one dry snap at a time.  
  
Sudden banging on the door, and Dean’s heartbeat kicks up fast enough to hurt, rustle of Sam’s .45 appearing from his clothes in a metal flash.  
  
Dean lets Sam cover the doorway as he goes for the handle, but really there’s not much point.  
  
Nobody who’s showed up to kill, maim or drag them off to be interrogated is gonna be real inclined to knock.  
  
Sure enough, Masters stands on the other side; head cocked and smirk firmly in place, like the worst game show prize in history.  
  
“Hey fellas,” she drawls, takes in Sam lowering his gun. “Miss me?”  
  
Dean just sighs heavy, waves her in. He just knows he’s gonna need bourbon for this.  
  
Behind her follows a guy in a white coat, almost looking like he’s come straight from a lab if it weren’t for the hospital scrubs underneath it. Patient playing doctor, doctor acting like a patient; Dean can’t tell.  
  
Truth be told, he’s kind of stalled on the dude’s face.  
  
It’s a face he’s seen before, like probably everyone else in the country. Several countries. A hemisphere and some change. Though he’s never seen it off a vidscreen; away from news tickers and roundtable talks, corper broadcasts.  
  
Dr Cas Tiel himself.  
  
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he says to Masters - Meg. Whatthefuckever - all but spits it.  
  
She has the nerve to roll her eyes. Tiel just looks uncomfortable, a little dazed maybe.  
  
Sam’s a pale statue, far away. Somewhere Dean can’t grasp.  
  
Meg steps in front of him, halo of lamplight around her. “Before you get a full head of steam going, I should point out that we need Cas here for this to work.” She jerks her head at the guy currently examining their busted up excuse for a computer, blue light pattering across his face as the screen runs through it’s halting start-up.  
  
Sam still hasn’t moved.  
  
“We need _him_?” Dean asks, beyond incredulous. One finger waving vaguely in the doc’s direction. Dean gets the distinct impression he’s got not idea they’re even talking about him. “And for what to work? Your plan involves a nutso genius who also turns out to be the guy responsible for the Leviathans? ‘Cause I gotta tell ya; I’m not loving it so far. How ‘bout you Sam?”  
  
Sam jerks, like a thousand volts just went through him. His eyes are a little vacant as they snap briefly to Dean before taking in the room, like he’d lost all sense of where he was.  
  
“I uh…” he starts, blinks hard a couple times. “I don’t know Dean, I mean maybe he can-”  
  
“Oh come on.” Dean’s whole hand motioning now. “How many of his marbles you think are still in the bag?”  
  
“Actually the whole thing was his idea,” Meg jumps in. “I’m just filling in the blanks as he speeds on ahead.” Cas stops for a minute, looks at her and smiles. Dean has no idea what to do with that.  
  
“We need more.” Sam suddenly finds his voice again. “If you want us to… harbour you, or whatever, we need to know what you can do that’s gonna make a difference. And what you’ve got on Dick.” Dean looks at him, can’t find the flaw anywhere, turns to Meg.  
  
“Well?” He waits.  
  
“How much do you understand about the way biochips work?” The low voice startles him as ‘Cas’ turns away from the table. His eyes flash - literally; a brief surge of aqua, glowing stark in the dim room. Rings of sun yellow rotate slow like water wheels around his pupils, his irises.  
  
Dean’s seen this before too.  
  
Dude’s got Leviathan tech in him.  
  
Meg must see his hand twitch toward his gun, quick undeniable shake of her head. He stalls, isn’t sure why, yet.  
  
“They’re uh…” he starts, makes himself hold the guy’s unblinking stare despite the sensation of insects crawling up his spine. “They control people’s augs. Connect ‘em to their brains, run the whole show from inside their nervous systems right?” He doesn’t know whether he should try to stop the cringe, shifts on the spot.  
  
“And do you know what happens if they fail?” Cas asks.  
  
The room seems to get colder, hair on Dean’s forearms standing up. Static before the lightning hits.  
  
“Augment psychosis.” Sam’s voice soft and knowing, loud in the silence. Cas’ eerily bright eyes dip for a second, forehead creasing. Dean’s teeth grind a headache up into his temples, red haze.  
  
“That’s only an initial symptom,” Cas grates, halting like it’s painful. “If a chip fails completely then-”  
  
“Death.” Meg takes over, Cas almost wringing his hands to pieces now. “The biochip fails; so do your augs. Then comes the dead part. That’s a little hard to fix.”  
  
“Where are we going with this?” Dean asks. “‘Cause I love the technospeak just as much as the next guy, but how does it fit in with whatever you two are working on?”  
  
“Dick’s latest corporate acquisition? Just so happens to be the largest manufacturer of biochips in the world,” Meg says, smiles completely humourless.  
  
Sam frowns. “Dick buys up smaller companies all the time, how’s-”  
  
Meg jumps in again before he can finish, all traces of that smile gone, “Very soon, there’s gonna be an announcement; warning about a potentially fatal ‘glitch’ in the current biochip firmware. The government will ‘strongly recommend’ people get their chips replaced at the nearest clinic. With ones oh-so kindly donated by Roman Innovations for a low, low price.”  
  
“Why?” Sam asks. “If he’s gonna rig a bait-and-switch that huge, what’s the goal?”  
  
Meg smiles again. “That signal you found? It’s a killswitch. Selectively shuts down the chips, and the people they’re connected to. It’ll look like the usual tragedy; psychotic delusions, severe pain, random malfunctions; with a very final conclusion.”  
  
“He’s taking over,” Cas says, face pinched, like he wants to throw up. “He’s planned this from the beginning; using our creations to subjugate people, selective slaughter.”  
  
“We’d really like to stop him.” Meg’s tone abruptly cheery. “You guys game?”  
  
Dean’s head is spinning a little. This whole thing sits wrong on every level, these two ‘innovators’ are responsible for more suffering than he can name. For Sam’s suffering. He shouldn’t do this, he knows, feels it right down deep.  
  
Sam’s standing almost next to him now, fixed point like nothing else is. “Well, yeah okay but how? You’d have to take out Dick and the source of the signal, probably at the same time.”  
  
“That’s a small tip in our favour,” Meg explains. “The research on the killswitch is being done at the main lab for the new generation of biochips. Dick’s overseeing the whole thing personally. He’s the linchpin; eliminate him and the work in that lab, and we just have a slightly smaller army of augmented lackeys to deal with.”  
  
Dean raises an eyebrow. “Oh is that all? Well when you put it like that…”  
  
Meg doesn‘t look put off, just stares him down. “Dick’s the major threat. We destroy their research on the signal, kill him, and live to fight another day.”  
  
“Killing Dick is gonna be tough,” Sam points out. “He’s got how many Leviathan augments at this point? We’ve dropped cars, even whole buildings on these guys before. Once they get past a certain level of replacement they’re almost impossible to take out permanently.”  
  
“That’s part of the plan,” Cas says. “We‘ve been trying to find a way to destroy the Leviathan technology for years, we think we can engineer a batch of nanites that will do it. We don‘t have time to make enough for a large weapon, but for one man…”  
  
“And you really think you can do it? Whip up some kinda super-virus that’ll gank Dick?” If Dean sounds sceptical as hell, it’s only ‘cause he is.  
  
Cas takes a step toward him, and Sam tenses almost more than Dean does. But he just plants a hand on Dean’s upper arm, easy and like they’ve known each other for years. Dean’s stuck between shrugging him off and clocking him in the jaw.  
  
“With your help, I think we can do it.”  
  
Dean thinks that if he looks hard enough, he can make out the places where the dude’s not all there, jagged and misaligned. Dean’s getting good at that.  
  
He takes a slow breath, feels it fill him. Heaviness dragged upward about his shoulders. “What do you need?”

  
~*~

 

It takes them just over a day to convert the upstairs of Rufus’ place into a kind of bare-bones workspace; equipment lugged out of the back of Dr Masters’ car and retrieved from other resistance dead drops she’d been using.  
  
Dean’s been watching both her and Tiel like a hawk with a gun; tracking every move and sniping at her. She gives back as good as she gets, usually with double the sly underhandedness and provoking stares.  
  
Tiel - Cas - is something else entirely. He alternates between hours of silence and then rambling about something totally tangential to whatever he’s actually doing. Sam doesn’t know if it’s just a trademark of his particular brand of genius or whatever psychological issues he’s dealing with, or maybe even the effect of all the Leviathan tech he’s had implanted into his brain.  
  
 _Does it frighten you, Sam? Seeing what you could be? Who you could be?_  
  
Sam’s kind of been avoiding the both of them. He gets the reasoning for doing this just as much as Dean does, even helped convince Dean that this is their best shot at bringing down Dick and by extension the Leviathan program, but these two are responsible for so much of what their lives have been about; so much _misery_ , intentional or not, that Sam can’t bring himself to strike up unnecessary chitchat.  
  
“I don’t think they can do it,” Dean says one evening, collapsing into the chair opposite Sam on the other side of the table.  
  
“What? Complete the weapon?” He’s already running through the tiny interactions he’s had with the two scientists, looking for the lie, but he can’t place one. “I thought they had most of it worked out already?”  
  
“Exactly,” Dean says, with a weary sigh. “They’ve got this whole plan for how to program the nanites or whatever; how they’ll kill Dick by shorting out his biochip and all that, but they’ve only got part of the stuff they need.” He takes a long drag from the beer in his hand, snorts to himself like all his hope is evaporating in front of him, and he’s glad to see it go. “They’ve got the programming, and no high-grade nanites; a delivery system with no payload; gun with no bullets. They’re worthless.” He flicks the cap of his beer onto the table, watches it careen in a spin before rattling to a stop.  
  
“You’re sure?” Sam asks, because if this whole thing is falling apart already then… he doesn’t even know.  
  
“I heard ‘em talking about it earlier,” Dean admits. “They’ve been trying to use their own augs to cobble the parts together; Leviathan tech from Cas and DEMON tech from Meg; one big jigsaw. But it’s not enough. They’ve both had a lot of their implants removed for one reason or other, and now they can’t spare the parts without…y’know.” He draws a fingertip along his throat, sharp cutting motion.  
  
“Well, can we get them the stuff they need? Steal it? We’ve broken into R.I. depots and warehouses before.”  
  
“Hell I dunno man,” Dean sighs. “I’m starting to think this whole thing was one giant pipedream.”  
  
There‘s a low _hum_ from across the room, and then, “Oh come on now Dean, don’t be such a pessimist.”  
  
They both dart to their feet as the air near the front door ripples and bends with sparking curves of grey-white light, like a mesh of tiny lightning bolts. The ripples spread further and further apart until they leave a man standing in a dark suit, like he’s just left a law firm somewhere; the deep red of his tie is a smooth line of blood, drawn down beneath his jacket.  
  
“Sorry for loosening the old sphincters, lads,” he says. “But there’s only so much whinging I’m prepared to suffer through.” He smiles, tips back on his heels a little and takes them in. “Right then, introduction time: I’m-”  
  
“Crowley,” Dean snarls. “Sorry but I’ve already reached my limit on supposedly dead wackos for this lifetime.” He clicks the hammer of his gun back. “I got an awesome consolation prize for ya though.”  
  
“You really think you’ve got enough bullets to do the job?” He’s smirking; hands folded into his pockets and head tilted slightly, like he’s curious. “Feel free to waste the ammunition, but I did come all this way to pull your precious little plan out of the gutter; be a shame to ruin a good suit.”  
  
“Wow, we must’ve put an ad out and forgot about it, Sam,” says Dean with a sneer. “All these brilliant forward thinkers coming t’us, offering their help.”  
  
“How did you get in here?” Sam asks. He might have cloaking tech implanted in him but he can’t walk through walls.  
  
Crowley’s stare turns on him, and Sam can see the red around the very edges of his eyes. “Oh I’ve been listening in for a while; had my men keeping an eye on you. Like your brother says, you’ve got some… interesting heavy hitters in your quaint little lair here. I never could resist a good conspiracy. I let myself in, hope you don’t mind.”  
  
“About to mind a lot less,” Dean says, gun arm visibly bracing.  
  
“Look, do you want to stomp Dick or not?” Crowley says. “I know you’ve got some former associates of mine holed up here, and I know they can’t quite get it up for you. I can help.”  
  
“Help?” Dean repeats like he’s never heard the word before. “Last I heard, you took out hits on both of ‘em. Sour grapes and all that.”  
  
Crowley’s smile this time is a slow creep of white teeth and a brief tinge of crimson over his eyes as they flick toward the staircase. “Oh I’d like nothing more than to roast the pair of them; for different reasons mind you, but still just as enjoyable. Sadly though, Dick’s become too troublesome to let myself get bogged down in old grudges.”  
  
“You mean he’s taken you apart and stepped on all the pieces,” Sam says, and that salesman veneer wavers on Crowley’s face for just an instant.  
  
“Either way,” Crowley says, hissing a little through the grit of his teeth. “I’ve got the resources and the manpower to help you go after Dick with a fighting chance.”  
  
“And why should we trust you?” Sam asks. It’s getting to be a sickeningly familiar question.  
  
Crowley scoffs, “Good God don’t. Never trust anyone.” He turns a little, looks past them. “A little lesson I learned from my last business partner.”  
The stairs creak as Cas walks down and stands - more than a little awkwardly - at the bottom, Meg following with a pissed off expression already set in place.  
  
“Hello Crowley,” Cas says, looking off into the middle distance at nothing.  
  
Crowley looks like he‘s tasted something awful, pinch of his mouth and twitch in the corner of his jaw. “Cas. It’s been a while. Can’t say you’re looking good for it, as surprised - and mildly disappointed - as I was to hear you weren’t dead after all.”  
  
“He says he wants to help,” Sam aims at them over his shoulder.  
  
Crowley shrugs, “Priorities, nothing more.”  
  
“Why?” Meg asks.  
  
“Can we keep the hired help out of this?” Crowley waves a dismissive, gloved hand at the foot of the stairs. “I’m not sure they’re cognisant enough to-”  
  
“Why would you risk coming to them, and not just arrange a deal with Roman? That’s what you’re best at, isn’t it?” Cas pipes up with a low, harsh tone like the words are getting dragged out of his throat on a length of razor wire.  
  
“You tried,” Dean says, sounding amused but not in a good way. “That’s it isn’t it? You went to Dick to try and save your own skin and he… what? Threw you out on your ass?”  
  
Crowley shrugs, but there‘s tension there now. “Don’t look so surprised. He’s not one for diversity in the marketplace. Or the public sector, come to think of it. He’s got his monopoly now, and he plans to keep it. Once Levis are the sole aug on the market he’ll start… whittling down the remaining stock.”  
  
“He’s gunning for you,” Sam says. “He’s got you running scared and just desperate enough to come to us.”  
  
“I loathe the bastard,” Crowley admits. “Now I can save your scheme, and we all go our merry ways until I can find the time to immolate the lot of you; or I can leave and go ride out Dick’s personal apocalypse on a faraway island. Your choice.”  
  
“And if we stop Dick you’ll… what? Quietly retire? Become a philanthropist?” Meg asks  
  
“‘Course not,” Crowley says. “But I at least don’t want to kick-start a genocidal revolution. Much too messy. Who’s the bigger threat, right now?”  
  
Dean takes a step toward him, “You double-cross us, then-”  
  
“Oh yes I know you’ll kill me bloody, blah blah. Fine.” Crowley waves him off, then reaches into his jacket and pulls out a silver cylinder. “Best unprocessed nanites on the market. I should know; they’re mine.” He throws it the short distance to Sam, and he catches it left-handed. Crowley smirks when he sees it. “Won’t complete your weapon outright, but consider it a show of good faith.”  
  
“Just boxed-up and ready to go, huh?” Sam says as he tucks the thing into a pocket.  
  
Crowley smiles, “I’m a model of efficiency.”  
  
“I’ll get a list of everything we need,” Meg says, in a tone like she’s daring him to say no so she’ll have an excuse.  
  
“You do that,” Crowley tells her, the pleasant tone a complete contrast to the look on his face.  
  
Dean gives him a look and cocks an eyebrow, and it somehow sums up every nagging misgiving about this whole screwed up situation.  
  
 _The devil you know._

  
~*~

  
“You’re done? You’re _sure_?” Dean’s asked them that twice now already, and he’s not sure if he just doesn’t trust them, or if he’s really that concerned about them screwing it up.  
  
“It’s done,” Meg says, all laconic confidence that offends Dean just on principle; makes him wonder if this is how’d she’d looked when she first came up with the biochip idea.  
  
 _Yeah congrats, you can undo your own epic fuck-up_ , he thinks.  
  
“Someone checked Crowley’s work, right?” Sam asks. “He didn’t mess with anything we’re gonna be using under fire?”  
  
“He held up his end,” Meg says with a nod, some of the sourness returning to her tone. “We kept his grubby mitts out of it as much as possible; the rest was all his gear that he so kindly donated to the cause.”  
  
“It will work,” Cas says. “Between the programming Meg devised, my knowledge of how Leviathan technology works, and Crowley’s DEMON nanites, we have a weapon that will kill Dick.” he’s saying all the right things but there’s something there underneath them that’s worrying Dean.  
  
“But?” Sam asks, just before Dean can.  
  
“It’s a one off,” Meg tells them, shrugging. “You get it right on the first attempt, or no dice.”  
  
Cas lifts what looks like an oversized syringe from a worktable; long metal tube with four sharp needle-prongs on the end of it, a glass panel in the middle of its length glowing with roiling blue shot through with white.  
  
“If you inject a Leviathan with this,” Cas tells Dean as he hands it over; it’s lighter than it looks. “Then it will kill him instantly. Permanently, beyond even their ability to repair.”  
  
Dean’s seen the kind of insane damage Levi implants can fix when someone has enough of them. The tube of what basically amounts to glowing goo doesn’t exactly feel like something they should be pinning all their hopes on.  
  
What else is there?  
  
He hands it back, and Cas slots it into a narrow case on the table, clicks the lid shut.  
  
“Crowley didn’t stick around for the champagne toast?” he asks.  
  
“He said he had ‘preparations’ to make,” Meg says, with actual air quotes.  
  
“Great. Don’t suppose he had a plan of how to get at Dick in the first place?” he asks. “‘Cause from where I’m sitting we’re talking about going after the most well known big kahuna in the western world with a magic gun that only fires once.”  
  
“He’ll be at the lab,” Meg drawls. “It’s not exactly _legal_ research, so no cops or outside help from the government types. We get in, wreck the place with a side order of dead Dick, and get the Hell out.”  
  
“Oh you got this all worked out, huh?” Dean asks her, the bitter anger already starting to choke. “We still have to get into the damn building, and past whatever Levi security they’ve got inside without getting shot or captured.”  
  
Meg looks over at Cas, who’s busying himself doing what looks like nothing with the computer. “Crowley had an idea about that,” she says.  
  
“Crowley has a way in?” Sam asks, looking between them with a slight squint.  
  
“Crowley was wrong,” Cas says, sounding a little manic and still not looking at any of them.  
  
Dean eyes him, “Really? You sound pretty squirrelly over it. What did he want you to do?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Cas says, his hands practically a blur as he fiddles with the tech in front of him, eyes a whirl of gold rings and flickering blue. “I’ve done all I can.” He jerks upright at looks at Dean, “I’ve destroyed everything, and I’ll destroy everything again. Can’t we just leave it at that?”  
  
“No,” Dean says. “No we can’t.”  
  
“Dean…” Sam’s voice is low, warning.  
  
Dean steps right up to Cas, looks into those artificial eyes and wonders how much there is new and how much was put there by all the crap he’s had piled on him by what Roman did with his work.  
  
“You made these things,” Dean murmurs. “And now you gotta help us stop ‘em. So you don’t get a pass, you don’t get to sit on the bench while everyone else steps up, nobody’s crying over your personal tragedy Cas, just clean up your mess.”  
  
Cas is frozen for a second, then steps around Dean and heads down the stairs, slam of the door a few moments later.  
  
“Nice,” Meg says, so much sarcasm Dean’s amazed she can breathe around it. “You remember me saying we needed him? Or did it leak out your wiffleball brain?”  
  
Dean clenches his jaw, “Look-”  
  
“No seriously,” she interrupts. “He’s probably the only person on the watch lists that Dick actually wants alive.”  
  
“That’s the plan?” Sam asks, incredulous. “Get him to turn himself in?”  
  
“If he shows up at that lab what do you think Dick will do?” She points out. “Cas creates a diversion big enough for us to get into the building just by walking up to the front door.”  
  
Dean frowns, “Why not just give him the weapon then?”  
  
Meg leans back against the table behind her, shrugs, “They’ll search him, it’s too risky. Dick gets a hold of that and we’re more than screwed.”  
  
“Okay, say that plan works,” Sam says, gesturing helplessly. “If he’s not up for it, then we can’t do it. We’re wasting time planning something that we can’t even get off the ground.”  
  
“You can’t get him to do it?” Dean asks Meg.  
  
She shakes her head, smiles a little, “I’m not his keeper, Dean. I can’t make him do anything. Half the time he’s not even aware of what he’s doing.”  
  
“I’ll talk to him,” Sam says, and Dean’s so surprised he doesn’t know where to start with that.  
  
“You’ve been avoiding the guy this whole time,” he point out. “What’s changed?”  
  
Sam looks down at his hands, thumb pressing into his left palm, when he faces Dean again he’s got that raw, open expression that’s always made Dean want to put up a million walls between his brother and the rest of the world; keep all the pain and death and torment as far away as possible.  
  
He’s royally screwed up that priority to the point he just wants to laugh at himself.  
  
“Just… trust me, Dean,” Sam says, and it slams a whopping hand down on every lifelong button Dean’s got that says _sure Sammy, I trust you._ It’s in his blood, his DNA; whatever else he is, to immediately think Sam’s the only person he _can_ trust. The only one he needs. But he knows his brother’s got a ton of PTSD-style bullshit locked up in his head that Dean doesn’t want to mix with Cas’ own flavour of crazy.  
  
But then that’s probably Sam’s point. Kinship or whatever.  
  
“I can do it, Dean,” Sam tells him, earnest to the core.  
  
Dean scrubs a hand over his face, pretends he doesn’t see the smirk on Meg’s face as she plays spectator to this little interlude, and forces himself to nod.

  
~*~

  
Sam finds Cas outside the cabin, sitting in the car he and Meg have been using; a slightly rusted Dodge pickup with a sizable dent in the tailgate, the paint a muted red. There’s music drifting from the open window, and Cas is sitting in the passenger seat with his head tipped back against the rest.  
  
He either heard Sam coming or just doesn’t care, since he doesn’t so much as twitch when Sam opens the door and drops into the seat next to him.  
  
“Sam,” Cas says, opening his eyes without looking over or even moving his head.  
  
“Look, I get why you don’t want to do this,” Sam starts, half turned in the seat to face Cas’ profile. “And I’m not even gonna say you should do it. But I think our chances are a lot better with you than without. You’ve come this far.”  
  
Cas is silent for a second, the indecipherable hum of the stereo just covering their breathing.  
  
“If we attack Dick and fail, you and Dean die heroically, correct?” he asks.  
  
Sam tries to predict where he’s going with that, “I guess.”  
  
“And at best, I die trying to fix my own stupid mistake. Or I don’t die, and instead I get locked up and forced to work on whatever Dick chooses to do next. You know the neural overlays I had implanted make him able to simple wipe my higher functions? I’d be a barely sentient toolbox. A collapsing mineshaft of thought and idea. Which is a kind of death, I suppose.”  
  
It’s the most Sam’s ever heard him say at once, and it’s one of the most horrifying things Sam can think of.  
  
“I’m not good luck, Sam,” he says, low and painfully matter-of-fact.  
  
“Maybe not,” Sam admits. “And I know you’ve already done a lot for us, but Cas…we still need you. And, bad luck or not, _no_ luck or not, I think you can do this.”  
  
Cas turns to him, a slow drag of his head against the seat behind. “You should blame me for what happened to you,” he says, glancing down at Sam’s hand where it’s in his lap. He’s been getting better about the lack of gloves thing, but the reminder still sometimes hits him like a punch he wasn’t braced for. “Without me you wouldn’t have been tortured the way you were. I enabled your suffering, no matter how indirectly.”  
  
Sam has to breathe deep for a few beats to try and sort through that. He could blame Cas, it’s true. Dean does, on some level or other, but he’s always been too willing to forgive people who hurt him and not the ones who hurt Sam; that skewed sense of self their life has left him with. Sam sometimes wishes he was selfless enough to try and do something about it. Or at least selfless enough to wish it sincerely.  
  
“I… I know you never meant for this to happen,” Sam starts, halting as he tries to find the right way to say it. “And maybe I should hate you for what you’ve done, but… what’d be the point? It’s what it is, Cas, and you’re intentions were good, or you would’ve kept working for Crowley; for the military. I think you were just trying to help, and… I don’t think you’re evil, Cas.” It’s not a perfect explanation, but from the look on Cas’ face it’s at least struck home.  
  
Cas swallows with a dry click, and when he speaks it‘s even raspier than usual, “Then I suppose I’ll go with you. And I’ll do my best.”

  
~*~

  
The barn was probably one part of a much larger farm at some point, but now It’s one of only two buildings left in the massive expanse of fields and nearby woodland, and the only one that still has four walls and a roof that actually holds out the elements. It’s basically the furthest from the nearest population centre or aug clinic as they could be without building a dome at the bottom of the ocean or something.  
  
Dean takes a kind of sadistic pleasure in the way he grinds the gears as they pull up, more glad than he can ever put into words that he’ll never have to drive this particular POS again.  
  
It takes them both working together to yank the warped wood of the barns door across, and the musty smell of damp wood and grass hits them in a slow wave as they step inside.  
  
“So, on a scale of one to ten,” Sam says, looking around, “how close are you to shrieking like a four year old and dancing in a circle?”  
  
“Shut up,” Dean says, like a reflex, but there’s a damning tug at the corners of his lips as he unties the tarpaulin that has Sam chuckling under his breath.  
  
The heavy yellowish cover flaps to the ground with a swift drag, and Dean’s smile becomes a full-on grin as he skims a hand over the Impala’s hood.  
  
“Hey, sweetheart,” he croons. “You miss me?”  
  
He’s checking the wing mirrors and the pressure in the tires when he catches the look Sam’s giving him.  
  
“What?” he asks, sounding defensive without even trying.  
  
“Nothing,” Sam denies, even though that look on his face says different. “I’m just trying to decide if I should be jealous.”  
  
It startles a real laugh out of Dean that carries weird in the mostly empty space of the barn, and he makes his face into a considering pose for a few seconds.  
  
“Nahh,” he says, grins slowly as he pops the driver‘s side door and lowers himself in. “Threesomes are always the answer, Sammy.”  
  
The drive back to Rufus’ place is probably the easiest Dean’s felt in his own skin for about a year. The seats form at his back and under his legs the way no other car ever has. The wheel fits his hands. The smell of the interior is basically the only definition he’s got for home that isn’t the word _Sam_ and the roar of the engine through his bones is almost as good as the music he can finally blast through the speakers.  
  
Sam tries to look like he’s just bemused by Dean’s reaction to the whole thing - which he admits he’s maybe playing up for the look on Sam’s face that’s not lined by tension or pain for a rare moment - but Dean can see the way he’s taking the old girl in like a friend who’s face he’s started to forget. A family member he hasn’t heard from in too long.  
  
“We could’ve waited,” Sam says eventually. “Be a shame if something happened to it now.”  
  
“Hey, if we’re doing this then I want her with us,” Dean answers as he goes for another tape. “If it goes the way we’re hoping then we can hit the road the way we really used to. And if not, well… no way I’m driving into the jaws of death or whatever in some crappy old junker.”  
  
“No we wouldn’t want that,” Sam agrees, overplaying the drama with a tremble in his voice, and Dean shakes his head like it’ll hide the smile.

~*~

 

“You sure you want to do this?”  
  
Dean frowns at Sam where he’s looming off to his side like a shadow. “Now you’re asking me that? I thought you were all about doing this from the get go?”  
  
Sam sighs, “I was… I mean, I am. But Dean, you and Bobby, you always had that father-son deal that I… look I’m just saying, we can do it without bringing him back again. We’ve got the inside scoop on Dick’s big plan now, so if this is just gonna make things worse then-”  
  
“He deserves his last words, Sam,” Dean sighs, looking down at the projector in his hands, catching the light. “Even if he is already… well.”  
  
Dean’s turning the projector over and over, and he remembers going through their dad’s stored things after he died, that same expression on his brother’s face as they tried to choose whether to hold onto the pieces of that life or toss them out. He remembers the almost motherly smile on Ellen’s face, and wishes he was any good at offering comfort that simple when someone needed it.  
  
Not that Sam’d accept it; probably think Dean’d finally lost it, he reminds himself with a pointless little breath of a laugh.  
  
They’ve got maybe two hours until their ragtag team of unlikely allies get back from wherever Crowley’s stashed the last pieces of equipment and supplies they need, so if they’re gonna do this, it needs to be now.  
  
Dean sets the device down on the blotchy surface of the nearest table, and almost hesitatingly flicks his thumb over the glowing blue circle in the centre. It pulses, just once, going a lighter shade that unwittingly reminds him of Cas’ eye implants, before green lines spread around the flat sides and meet one another, like water flowing between the cracks in paving.  
  
For a few seconds, Dean’s convinced that they’ve been hauling the thing around for so long that it’s just not working anymore. They’re supposed to have a finite lifespan, right? Maybe they’re too damn late.  
  
“Hey fellas.”  
  
Sam spins as Dean does, and there’s Bobby, standing in the middle of the room, looking completely normal in his flannel and ballcap, a slight smile creasing his pale face and the corners of his eyes. At first glance you’d think he was just standing there; flesh and blood and breath all as it should be. But then Dean sees he’s not casting a shadow, even with the orangey glow of the lamp right behind him. And his clothes and patches of his skin are covered with spidering white patterns, like frost on a windshield.  
  
“Bobby,” Dean breathes as a smile stretches across his face.  
  
“Hey Bobby,” Sam says, nodding kind of awkward.  
  
“Yeah we weren’t sure if you’d uh…” Dean waves vaguely toward the blinking lights of the projector.  
  
“Well you should’a,” Bobby chides him. “You still got the damn thing. Dumb. You should’a burned it, right off.”  
  
Sam winces, “Bobby, we-”  
  
“You don’t know,” he says, rubbing at the sleeve of his coat like that’s actual ice covering him. “So much in here’s outta place, all jumbled and screamin’ dark. S’bad.”  
  
“It’s not your fault,” Sam says.  
  
“Right,” Bobby chuffs, shaking his head. “That’s just what data ghosting does to ya. I really bet the farm I could outsmart that.”  
  
“We’ve got a plan,” Dean tells him, like it’ll be consolation for the bullet he took for them. “To bring down Dick, you don’t have to worry about-”  
  
“Well you’d better do it, soon,” Bobby says. “S’helluva lotta people who’re owed that monster being shoved into a hole in the ground. But don’t you dare get your fool selves killed doing it, y’hear me?”  
  
Sam smiles, but it’s bent out of shape. “We’ll do our best,” he says.  
  
Bobby smiles at them both, but again it’s not formed from anything happy. “I know. And for what it’s worth…I never should’ve done this. Stupid ass thing to do; try an’ outsmart the final curtain by sticking a chip in your own head. Wasn’t fair to either of you.”  
  
Sam’s mouth is pinched; his forehead’s creased with lines. “We’ll be alright, Bobby.”  
  
“Yeah well, I’d better not be seeing either of you on the other side or whatever for a damn long time. You do your jobs, and you get out clean.”  
  
“We will,” Dean promises.  
  
Bobby nods, looks them both over in a way that has Dean doubting he isn’t actually standing there alive. Nobody recreated from thoughts and a snapshot of memories stored in hardware can be this _real_. “And you boys… you take of each other.”  
  
Dean’s hand isn’t steady, but he lifts the projector off the table and gives Bobby one last nod before he drops it into the burning coals, sparks crackling off at the impact and flames licking up over the silvery metal.  
  
Almost instantly, arcs of pluming blue and grey spread upward from Bobby’s feet, leave nothing but glimmering dust behind before it fades into empty air; like thousands of tiny, dying lightning bugs.  
  
It takes under a minute for the projector to warp and turn glossy; like mercury freed from a thermometer. Red-orange-blue flame pokes up through warped gaps that expand and give off a smell like ozone and paint on a hot radiator, the whole thing smudging and smoking until it’s just an undefined mess of silver-black nothing.  
  
Bobby’s expression set solid just as his image started to break down, and finally he vanishes completely with a last buzzing pulse of light, the room seeming suddenly a lot darker with the meagre glow of the fire and the one lamp.  
  
They stand there for a few seconds in the quiet, staring at the last place Bobby’d been standing, almost waiting for the ghost of a ghost.  
  
“You okay?” Sam asks. Kid never did meet a silence he liked.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean says, mostly breath but not wobbling at least.  
  
“Are you lying?” Dean snorts at that, like Sam’s added another level to this ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’ thing they keep falling into.  
  
“I just… I hung onto that stupid thing.” He waves absently at the glowing coals. “I thought that when we…y’know, switched him off or whatever, I’d feel… more.” There’s a pit near his heart that’s weighing him down, a lump in his throat and his eyes are prickling, but he’s not numb or angry or desperately shoving at the sadness the way he’d been when Bobby’d got shot.  
  
Sam’s looking at him with an expression so gentle Dean can’t bear it. “Maybe… maybe you only mourn once.”  
  
Dean doesn’t know how he feels about that. If he agrees or disagrees. He doesn’t suppose it matters now; Bobby’s gone for good, like so many others there aren’t enough fingers and toes between the two of them to count.  
  
He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, twists until purple dances across the black, then breathes heavy through his nose.  
  
“Better get some shuteye,” he says in lieu of anything else. “We gotta save the world in the morning, Sammy.” He claps his brother on the shoulder, feels the tail end of the snort through Sam’s broad back before he heads for the bedroom.  
  
Big day tomorrow.

~*~

  
The Levi goon's head rolls with a slick noise on the stone until it comes to a stop, trailing black sludge as his implants try and keep him alive.  
  
Dean knows that the decapitation won’t be enough; not by itself, but Cas was nabbed by the front security guys five minutes ago, and they can’t hang around waiting for them to notice the break-in through the emergency exit.  
  
“What now?” Sam whispers as they creep down a corridor, trying to stay away from the roving eye of the camera mounted on the wall.  
  
“Split up,” Dean says, trying to recall the guesswork map of the place Crowley had gotten from… somewhere. Dean wasn’t looking that gift horse in the mouth; thing’s probably got fangs. “You take out the lab, I’m going after Dick. Where’s Meg?”  
  
Sam shakes his head, “If she’s inside then they haven’t noticed yet; no alarms. She said she’d bust Cas out of lockup and keep the guards off our backs, we’ll just have to trust her.”  
  
Dean can’t quite help the wince.  
  
“Okay, you take the east corner stairway, and I’ll go north.” He point up the shining length of corridor.  
  
Sam nods, takes a step along the way they’ve been going before he turns back and presses a quick jab of a kiss against Dean’s lips, too fast to react to.  
  
“Don’t get killed,” Sam says, somehow more of a whisper than he’d already been using. Then he’s moving away with the machete pressed flat to the underside of his forearm, gun in his left hand and checking every doorway he passes.  
  
Dean takes the stairs two at a time, heart thudding hard and even in his chest, adrenaline tingling in his fingertips. Two floors up he hears the muffled sound of gunfire, followed by shouting, then a klaxon starts to sound somewhere in the building.  
  
It’s probably Meg, he tells himself. It’s gotta be her.  
  
He takes the stairs three at a time, feels the pull in his thighs as a welcome burn.  
  
The building’s a fairly squat, square-shaped thing, so when Dean reaches the highest floor he walks in a loping, decreasing spiral from corridor to corridor. The place seems to be mostly empty - at least this high up - with a lot of rooms with wide, clear walls of glass and tables loaded down with tech so far ahead of what Dean’s used to he’s not sure what half of it is.  
  
He’s got a fairly good idea though, judging from the severed arm he spots in one of the labs, sliced open from wrist to the faintest suggestion of where the elbow’s supposed to be, wires spilling out and blood marked metal gleaming from the inside and connecting with machines around the pronged stand the thing’s resting on.  
  
It’s not like they didn’t know R.I. did human experimentation, Dean reminds himself; and then again when another lab holds a high platform of transparent concentric circles, with glass jars resting on it like compass points in three dimensions. Each one’s full of a greenish liquid, and the distinctive shape of what Dean just knows are human brains.  
  
He somehow doubts that Dick uses the approved organ donor route.  
  
Rounding another corner, Dean picks up voices in one of the last rooms on the floor he hasn’t checked. He creeps with his back held flat to the cool, white wall, until he can see through the gaps in the shades into the lab beyond.  
  
It’s depressingly ordinary, given the horror shows he’d passed getting there, but it makes up for that with the fact that Dick Roman himself is standing near a computer display mounted on one of the walls, bright, linear projections scrolling over the surface on either side of him like an architect’s diagrams or .  
  
There’s a guy in a white coat working at another terminal, tapping at a laser keyboard outlined in deep red on the solid white table. Dean tries not to think of him as being like Cas. Anyone working in this place hasn’t just been augmented to the point of insanity; they’re complicit in the research that Dick’s doing. They see the truth of it all and they do nothing.  
  
Dick turns as Dean steps into the room, but the researcher is a little slower. Dean’s machete is already singing through the air before he’s even halfway facing him, and the blade slices clean through his neck with barely a sound, the guy’s head falling at an angle and away from his body.  
  
Dick takes all this in, and then smiles. “A little abrupt,” he says, almost condescending. “But okay. Dean Winchester, nice to finally meet you in person. Well, your actual person, and not a poor duplicate meant to kill lots of people in public places.” He says it totally amiable, like he’s talking about the weather.  
  
“Yeah it’s a real thrill for me,” Dean says, as he swings hard with the blade.

  
~*~

  
It doesn’t take Sam long to notice there’s a ringing in his head that’s getting louder the closer he gets.  
  
He thought it was the sound of whatever tech Roman’s experimenting with, but it’s got that high whining quality like he’d been standing too close to an explosion; dimming all the noise around it and muffling his breath to his own ears.  
  
Gunfire springs up somewhere away from him; he can’t tell where with his hearing this screwed up,  
  
It starts to hurt as soon as he realises he’s located the lab; a wide, open room banked with screens and readouts he can’t even begin to fathom. His hand is throbbing like he’s dipped it in acid, and he can’t tell if it’s something in the room or the blaring noise in his head that’s making wraith patterns of blurred white spring across his vision.  
  
There’s a clear space in the middle of the lab; a void with no workbenches or hologram projections, except in it’s sitting an angular, smooth grey machine; bulky but oddly graceful; narrower at the top and glowing a dull green. It looks like the kind of pod an insect would weave around itself; wide and latticed with patterns of silver-white. Attached to either side are four tall, slender poles arranged in two pairs that reach almost to the ceiling, fine metal spikes dotting the upper two or three feet.  
  
Antennae, he realises. The signal’s gonna be broadcast from whatever this thing is. It might be a prototype or it might be that they’re doing all the work here. It’s not as if Dick doesn’t have satellites and transmitters and whatever else he’d need for this.  
  
Which means that ringing sound…  
  
He jerks into motion, tugs the pack of nano explosive out of his jacket and kneels to affix it to one side of the machine. The closer he gets, the more it feels like someone’s taken an ice pick to his temples. Or a drill, scoring through his skull and grinding in the root nerves of his teeth, his hand a searing weight that he can’t bear to move.  
  
He staggers back to his feet, barely avoiding crashing back to his knees as the pain digs into his spine sharper than a dagger. Using the wall as a guide, he pulls himself back down the corridor, tears sticking in his lashes even as the feeling dials back as he gets further away.  
  
Finally turning a corridor and slumping hard against the wall, he pulls the detonator and primes it, squeezes his eyes shut at the same time that he pulls the trigger.

  
~*~

  
The machete comes within a few inches of Dick’s suit-clad shoulder before his hand comes up like a fast forward motion and catches it, stops it dead and holds it there. Dean hadn’t noticed the too smooth paleness of his hands until now, creeping up under his sleeves. From the way his face doesn’t lose that patiently superior smile, Dean thinks it’s probably his entire arm - both arms, Jesus - that he’s had replaced.  
  
They look a little like Sam’s hand; pale, slender looking but obviously crazy strong, but these are slightly different, like looking at the progression of a car model.  
  
 _An upgrade of an upgrade. Fuck, that’s how far gone he is._  
  
“Dean,” Dick says, like he’s talking to a disappointing child. “Did you really think it was going to be that easy?”  
  
“Was kinda hoping,” Dean grunts as he tries to reach into his jacket without being obvious, shifts the grip on the machete’s handle and gets a solid shove to the chest for his trouble.  
  
It’s like being hit by a train; he flies backwards and collides with the edge of the bench behind him and crumples to the ground with pain throbbing in his back and chest like he’s been squeezed in a vice.  
  
He gets a hand into the inside of his jacket, drags the cold metal tube of the syringe out of the pocket as he stands.  
  
Dick looks at it, then at Dean again, and still the freaky smile doesn’t waver. “Good on you; pulling that together. A-plus.”  
  
Dean lunges forward, strikes out with his now-empty fist as he tries to stab the needle ends of the weapon through the guy’s suit. But Dick twists his arm as easy as breathing, and the thing clatters to the ground. Dean has just enough time to kick it to the side in case Dick decides to stomp on it, but then he’s being lifted with one hand wrapped around his neck, the pressure crushing his throat and choking off his air, blood throbbing in his temples and the base of his neck, eyes feeling like they’re gonna burst right then and there.  
  
Just as his vision starts to blacken and cone inward to a murky impression of Dick’s stone-faced glare, the pressure releases and he’s collapsing into a hacking, wheezing mess, desperately trying to claw air into his lungs.  
  
He forces himself to look up, and sees Dick straightening away from the nearest wall, glaring off in the direction of the doorway.  
  
It’s Cas.  
  
“Cas Tiel,” Dick says, tugging his damn tie back into place. “Good to see you again. Thanks for arming my little revolution, here.”  
  
“It’s over now,” Cas says. He’s got the syringe, but there’s no way he’ll get the drop on Dick again.  
  
“Is it?” Dick asks with a smarmy smirk. “From where I’m standing it’s just getting started. Face it Cas; humanity was always a prototype; something to be surpassed. They’ll be better off once they stop deluding themselves.”  
  
Cas makes a sloppy, telegraphing move toward Dick, but a single punch is all it takes to send him hurtling into a stack of boxes and further until he slams into the wall and drops in a heap, the syringe falling next to him with a gentle roll.  
  
Dick turns back to Dean with a slight shrug. “This is just a transition stage, Dean,” he says, almost like he’s not talking about massacring countless people. “There’s no way out; it’s evolution through conflict; it’s either struggle or succumb. I appreciate that you have a role to play, but you can’t win.” He strides closer, and Dean’s balling his fists for another futile round, when suddenly there’s a low _roar_ and everything shakes, like a giant’s scooped the building up and rattled it like a kid’s toy.  
  
Detonation. _Sam_.  
  
Dick stumbles mid-stride, and Dean presses forward and manages to get two, three hits that feel like they’re gonna break his knuckles, before his hand gets grabbed and squeezed hard enough that he almost drops to the ground again at the pain of it.  
  
There’s a noise like shredding wet paper, and then a low, sickening crunch before the tip end of Dean’s machete slices through the front of Dick’s suit from the back, Cas with a focused grimace on his face as he twists the handle and makes black residue soak through the fabric around the wound. Dick coughs more of the stuff and tries to make a grab for Cas, but he’s held in place like an insect pinned to cardboard.  
  
“Dean,” Cas calls, and throws the syringe in a high arc through the air.  
  
Dean grabs it like a javelin caught ready to throw, and shoves the burnished hollow needles into the side of Dick’s neck right to the hilt; as close to the jugular as he can manage.  
  
The plunger depresses with a rapid rushing sound, the glowing blue swarm of suspended nanites flowing through in under a second, and Dean can see the faint trace of that light as it works into the blood vessels and through the rest of Dick’s body.  
  
He convulses, and jerks his neck like he’s gonna break his spine all on his own, then his ears and nose and even his eyes start to bleed the typical Levi sludge that means he’s trying to heal himself. His mouth moves silently, and nearly every vein from where Dean’s holding the syringe into his flesh is a corroded black now.  
  
Dick makes a grating noise Dean’d almost call a laugh, and there’s a thudding coming from him now like a slow drumbeat, pulses of heaving air that waves out like ripples on the surface of a pond.  
  
 _Shit_ , Dean has time to think, right before everything goes utterly, deathly still, and then explodes in a blast of fetid air and static charge, pain radiating from everywhere Dean can consciously feel.  
  
Then it all goes dark.

~*~

  
As he sprints for where Dean’s supposed to have gone, Sam can tell something’s changed.  
  
The lab exploding was a plume of flame and charred debris that washed down the length of the corridor and nearly roasted him where he stood, but it’s more than the shock of the destruction. Something’s _changed_.  
  
It’s like missing a tooth, even though he’s already checked for that. An empty space where there’s always been something. For a spinning, panicked instant he thinks Dean’s died and he can somehow sense it, but that’s not it either. It’s coming from him; deep down in the recesses and shadows of his head.  
  
He’s different, lighter.  
  
He skids on the floor as he reaches the top level of the building, and he’s hoping against hope that that feeling of being _alone_ means what he thinks and not that his brother’s lying dead at Dick Roman’s feet.  
  
Sam careens into the lab - or more like what’s left of it - with his heart rattling in his chest and sweat forming on his brow and upper lip.  
  
The room’s a disaster zone; tables and screens scattered, displaced and broken. There’re bits of equipment lying on the floor and even old fashioned paper files and boxed strewn everywhere.  
  
There’s Leviathan nanite gunk over everything, like arterial spray but stinking of metal tang and on a much larger scale. There’s a central point like the gap in the middle of a blast pattern, but no sign of Roman or Dean.  
  
His breathing’s getting shallow, and he can hear his pulse in his ears going way too fast, old familiar panic clawing cold at his insides.  
  
A rustle sounds from somewhere in the debris, then a battered groan, and adrenaline-sharp relief crests outward from Sam’s chest in a wave, and he drags an overturned table to the side to find his brother amid a jumble of storage crates and glass. He’s bleeding and looks dazed as hell, but he’s alive.  
  
“You’re alive,” he says, really without meaning to, and sounding pathetically breathless even to himself.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean grunts, plucking a long, jagged shard of glass from his calf like an oversized splinter. “Jury’s out on intact though.”  
  
Sam lends a hand and pulls Dean to his feet, clasps his upper arm and tries to check him for signs of a concussion before Dean bats him away.  
  
“I’m alright,” he says, and the mess he’s in coupled with his pained expression doesn’t match the knowing softness in his voice. “Bitch of a headache though,” he adds. “Where’s Cas?”  
  
“Cas?” Sam asks, surprised. “Cas was here?”  
  
“Yeah he uh, he showed right at the last second. Saved my bacon. Couldn’t have ganked Dick without him.” Sam can’t tell if he’s surprised or just weary.  
  
Sam shifts more of the room’s scattered contents, and finds Cas much like he’d found Dean; sprawled and stunned and a little beaten up, but still alert enough.  
  
Dean helps him lift Cas upright and set him on his feet, muttering, “Dude’s heavier than he looks,” As he kicks part of a display projector clear of their patch of floor.  
  
“Did it work?” Cas mumbles, blinking slow but with even pupils.  
  
“Yeah,” Dean huffs. “Yeah it actually did. Thanks for the assist there, Cas.”  
  
There’s still no ground-in anxiety; or flashes of that random delusion, Sam realises.  
  
“We’d better find Meg,” he says, still trying to take everything in. “Before more Levis show up.”  
  
“Not to worry,” suddenly floats over from the doorway. Crowley looking like an ash-covered smudge in his dark suit through Sam’s moisture-addled eyesight.  
  
“Well done, boys,” Crowley says with a smile. “Seriously, I was expecting to hightail it out of here with your entrails left cooling on the floor. I’m impressed.”  
  
“It’s not over,” Cas intones, shuffling to stand unsupported, blood streaking his temple.  
  
Crowley shrugs and steps in, walking over the detritus like it‘s his kingdom. “Of course it’s not, it never is. But you’ve lopped off the beast’s head now, just the floundering limbs to worry about. We‘ve got the plans for the anti-Levi weapon, we’ll get them in the end.”  
  
“And you?” Sam asks “You just going back your own little corner?”  
  
“Why would I do that? Dick’s dead, along with his entire board of directors, and I’ve been building up a nice cache of funds and negative PR as a final blow in case I should be presented with… oh, let’s call it an opportunity. Such is business.”  
  
“Back to screwing up the world the old-fashioned way, huh?” Dean says.  
  
Crowley gives him a sideways glance. “Now now Dean, I’ve got a small army of DEMONs securing this whole place. You want to walk out with all your limbs unbroken and your head still attached?”  
  
“We had a deal,” Sam warns.  
  
“So we did,” He shrugs. “But I suggest you hurry up, there’s not much time left.”  
  
“Until what?” Cas asks, sounding less slurred.  
  
“Until I reduce this building to a pile of smouldering rubble,” Crowley says, nonchalant. “Can’t leave the stuff Dick was working on just lying about now can we? Much less the rather blatant killing spree that went on; might look bad on the evening news.”  
  
“As opposed to a bombing?” Dean asks.  
  
Crowley doesn‘t look worried, reaches out and pulls a chunk of glass from under Deans collar, flicks it away. “I’ll find a way to get it reported as an accident; gas leak, incompetent and dangerous research; the usual. That or I’ll blame it on those Word of God psychos and kill a few more birds with a rather well aimed stone.”  
  
“Where’s Meg?” Cas suddenly asks.  
  
His demeanour shifts, but it’s still all artifice. “Waiting for you. She got a little banged up during her sweep of Dicky boy’s hired security. Nothing she can’t come back from. I thought about scooping her up, but, well… she’s more trouble than she’s worth to me, right now.”  
  
“Real nice of you,” Dean grunts. “And you’re just gonna let us leave? No turnarounds?”  
  
“Why would I bother?” He asks. “We all got what we wanted; Dick’s dead, saved the world, and now I’ve got empires to rebuild, fortunes to amass, old rivalries to snuff out.” He spares Cas a smile that isn’t a smile, steps back out the way he came. “Until next time, boys. Toodles.” He walks off down the corridor, tap of his shoes receding.  
  
They exchange a look, the three of them, then Dean sighs and shrugs off Sam’s arm, steps forward, crunch of refuse beneath his feet.  
  
“Let’s get the hell outta here, huh?”

~*~

  
  
**_EPILOGUE_**  
  
  
 _“…President has halted trading on the markets following the massive and sudden decline in Roman Innovations stock price, which fell over eighty percent in light of revealed ‘financial problems’…”  
  
“…CEO Richard Roman has been unavailable for comment, however there are growing rumours of possible securities fraud being investigated by the S.E.C.…”  
  
“…that Richard Roman falsified his financial statements, and faked his own death as a means of…”_  
  
| |  
  
 _“…in a press conference earlier this morning, Mr. Crowley vowed to maintain the integrity of the augmentation industry, by offering a multimillion dollar bailout for…”  
  
“…massive recall of Leviathan grade implant technologies across several countries due to newly discovered health risks…”  
  
“…clinics shutting down in America, the United Kingdom and China, as public demand for increased safeguards continues to escalate…”_  
  
| |  
  
 _“…as the world was stunned by evidence leaked to the media of forcible human experimentation being done by former augmentation giant Roman Innovations. An investigation is ongoing; however it is believed that…”_  
  
  
“You believe that, Sammy?” Dean asks, as the radio dial click into silence.  
  
“I know,” Sam says, shaking his head. “It’s shocking, really.”  
  
Dean grins at his brother, sees it mirrored and feels the lightness near his heart expanding outward, taps his fingers on the steering wheel.  
  
“So,” he says, loose and easy, creak of the leather beneath his shoulders. “Where to next?”  
  
“Uh… Seattle,” Sam answers, flicking though a datapad. “Cas said Kevin’s got something on Crowley we can use.”  
  
Dean nods, snags the datapad out of Sam’s hands and decides why the fuck not; hauls him in by the back of the neck and kisses him, deep and unhurried like they’ve got unlimited time and endless road. They don’t, obviously; the fight’s still on, and maybe it always will be.  
  
He pulls back, sees that rekindled spark behind the shifting colour of Sammy’s eyes, and thinks; hell:  
  
Close enough.  
  
  
 ** _END_**


End file.
